Guillain-Barre risk unlikely after vaccination

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) does not appear to be a risk following administration of several common vaccines, including seasonal trivalent inactivated influenza vaccines, researchers found. Over a 13-year period, there was no significant increase in the odds of developing GBS within 6 weeks of receiving any vaccine (odds ratio 1.3, 95% CI 0.8-2.3), according to Roger Baxter, MD, of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, Calif., and colleagues. The findings from this retrospective study were consistent for the individual vaccines examined, including trivalent influenza vaccine (OR 1.1, 95% CI 0.4-3.1), the researchers reported online in Clinical Infectious Diseases. “Although we had limited power to fully assess the risk of GBS following vaccination due the rarity of the outcome, the low numbers of GBS cases that were temporally associated with vaccination, coupled with our results, provide reassurance that the risk of GBS following any vaccine, including influenza vaccines, is extremely low,” they wrote. GBS...