Finnish scientists ID link between GSK's swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy - FierceVaccines
Of the more than 30 million people in almost 50 countries who have received GlaxoSmithKline's ($GSK) Pandemrix, close to 800 have developed narcolepsy. And now, for the first time, a team from Finland thinks it knows why.
Comparing Pandemrix with Arepanrix, a vaccine used in Canada with the
same adjuvant, the researchers found that Pandemrix had more of one
structurally altered viral nucleoprotein--a disparity lead researcher
Outi Vaarala attributed to the way the vaccines were prepared.
"The vaccine virus itself has components of the virus. It is also
supposed to contain viral protein. There's nothing extraordinary about
that," she told Yle, Finland's national broadcasting company.
"The difference was that Pandemrix had one viral protein in a different
form and there was more of it."
