Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Mar;54(6):800-4.
doi: 10.1093/cid/cir960. Epub 2012 Jan 19.

Recurrent Guillain-Barre syndrome following vaccination

Roger Baxter  1 , Ned Lewis, Nandini Bakshi, Claudia Vellozzi, Nicola P Klein; CISA Network
Affiliations

Recurrent Guillain-Barre syndrome following vaccination

Roger Baxter et al. Clin Infect Dis. 2012 Mar.

Abstract

Background: Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute polyradiculopathy, thought to be autoimmune, which has been reported following vaccinations. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends not administering influenza vaccine to individuals who have had a history of GBS within 6 weeks of a prior influenza vaccination if they are not at high risk of severe complications from influenza illness.

Methods: We identified GBS cases from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California databases from 1995 into 2006 using hospital discharge codes; each medical record was neurologist-reviewed and only GBS-confirmed cases were included for follow-up. We followed confirmed cases through 2008 for vaccinations and recurrent GBS.

Results: We identified 550 cases of GBS over 33 million person-years. Following their GBS diagnoses, 989 vaccines were given to 279 of these individuals, including 405 trivalent inactivated influenza vaccines (TIV) administered to 107 individuals with a prior diagnosis of GBS. Among the 550 total cases of GBS, 18 initially had onset within 6 weeks of TIV; of these, 2 were revaccinated with TIV without a recurrence of GBS. Only 6 individuals of 550 (1.1%) had a second (recurrent) diagnosis of GBS. Among these 6 individuals, none had any vaccine exposure at all in the 2 months prior to the second onset of GBS.

Conclusions: In our population of over 3 million members, during an 11-year period, risk of GBS recurrence was low. There were no cases of recurrent GBS after influenza vaccination and none within 6 weeks after any vaccine.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

MeSH terms