Wednesday, November 25, 2009

H1N1 vaccine toxicity?

The recent flurry of reports about side effects resulting from the recent H1N1 vaccines have caused many people to go into a flap.

The HSA reported a series of 27 cases, with one particularly problematic case of Sweet's Syndrome.

Canada reported high frequencies of unusual adverse reactions and some deaths, which resulted in cessation of the vaccinations, and withdrawal of the GSK vaccine.

Earlier China had reported 2 deaths, but evidence later discounted their relationship to the vaccine.

But actually, despite the fact that they are all H1N1 vaccines, they are all essentially different products. The China vaccine is China's own special product. The Singapore vaccine, I believe is pretty much the CSL version at the moment, while the Canadian vaccine is a GSK product manufactured in Canada.

It's interesting that the Canadian product is called Arepanrix and the Singapore GSK version is called Pandemrix. According to the GSK website, the difference is that Arepanrix is translucent and has particles..... Hmmmm...... poor manufacturing giving rise to allergies? We'll wait for the werdict.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did someone also mention that the certain components like the antibiotics are also ototoxic (can cause temp and even permanent hearing impairment (if you are already hearing-impaired).

gigamole said...

Some antibiotics such as the aminoglycosides are toxic to the auditory nerve. But this is really quite a different topic from the vaccine toxicities.