Swine flu vaccine linked to narcolepsy – study

Researchers in Finland said they had confirmed a link between the swine flu vaccine and the onset of the sleep disorder narcolepsy in children.

Narcolepsy is a chronic nervous system disorder which causes people to become excessively drowsy, often uncontrollably falling asleep and, in more severe cases, suffering hallucinations or paralysing physical collapses called cataplexy.

In this age group, patients who were inoculated were 12.7 times more likely to develop narcolepsy than those who were not, although all of the patients who developed the disorder had a genetic predisposition to it, the study found.

The vaccine did not have an effect on the number of narcolepsy cases among children under four years of age or youth older than 19, according to the researchers.

In Finland, 79 children between the ages of four and nine developed narcolepsy after receiving the Pandemrix vaccine, which is a rate of six in 100,000.

Of these cases, an unusually high number, 76, also suffered from bouts of cataplexy, said THL.

Sweden, Norway, and France are also investigating the possible link between Pandemrix or the comparable vaccine Arepanrix and an increase in narcolepsy, but so far the link has only been shown in Finland and Sweden.