Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Children who receive a four-in-one combination vaccination given to young children to protect them from measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox are twice as likely to have a fever-related seizure 7-10 days after getting the shot than children who get two separate vaccinations at the same health care visit for the same diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The ongoing study focused on children who received the MMRV, a vaccine that combines the measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox vaccines in one shot, and children who received a chickenpox vaccine on the same day but in a separate shot as the MMR, a vaccine that combines measles, mumps and rubella vaccines.

According to the study, the MMRV vaccine caused 77 febrile, or fever, seizures out of a sample size of 63,000 children, or a rate of 1.2 children per 1,000. Among children who received the MMR vaccine and a separate V vaccine for chickenpox on the same day instead of the four-in-one combination vaccine, 174 out of 376,000 children experienced febrile seizures, for a rate of about 1 in every 2,000. The CDC also reports that children who receive the MMR vaccine are more likely to have febrile seizures 8-14 days after vaccination than children who are not vaccinated at all.

ProQuad is the trade name for the MMRV vaccine produced by Merk Pharmaceuticals. It is approved for use in children from 12 months to 12 years of age. Both the MMRV and the MMR with the chickenpox vaccine (varicella) are often given to children between 1 and 2 years of age. One in five children will experience at least one of the following side effects from the vaccine – soreness or swelling at the injection site, fever and rash. The CDC notes that febrile seizures caused by the MMRV vaccine cannot be prevented.

The CDC stresses that the dangers of illnesses due to contracting the live diseases is greater than the risk of side effects due to vaccinations, and points out that evidence suggests that separate vaccines for each disease may be safer than combination vaccines. However, many health care professionals worry that if the combination vaccines were replaced with single ones, many children may not receive immunizations for all four diseases. Therefore, most health care professionals support a combined vaccine.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 12:09 pm and is filed under News, product liability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.