Neurologists urged to watch for rare swine flu vaccine side-effect:

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/09/neurologists_urged_to_watch_fo.html

by Andy Dworkin, The Oregonian
Tuesday September 01, 2009, 5:00 AM

The last time the United States had a swine flu scare, mass vaccinations led to an even bigger worry that the injections might have caused a few dozen cases of a rare disease called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which paralyzes parts of the nervous system, usually temporarily.

As the nation prepares for another round of 2009 H1N1 flu shots this fall, the federal government is urging neurologists to keep an eye out for new cases of Guillain-Barre.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Neurology have asked all neurologists to report new cases of Guillain-Barre in people who get vaccines this fall and winter to the Food & Drug Administration's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The CDC says there is no reason to think this year's swine flu vaccine causes Guillain-Barre, but the shots are still being tested. You can read more about those tests and the vaccines at www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu.

Guillain-Barre makes people's limbs tingly and weak, and in rare cases it kills people. It's still not clear whether the 1976 swine flu vaccine, which about 43 million U.S. residents got, caused the nervous-system problem. Some studies estimate that the shot added about a one-in-a-million risk of Guillain-Barre. That's not a big risk, but since the 1976 flu didn't turn out to be highly dangerous, it fueled lots of public unhappiness and suspicion about the vaccination effort.

- Andy Dworkin; andydworkin@news.oregonian.com