A new meningitis vaccine may slightly raise the risk for a paralysing condition in young people who receive it, but experts at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention say there's an even greater risk of meningitis for individuals who go without the shot.
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The condition in question, called Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), is characterised by increasing weakness in the legs. According to a report released Thursday in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the total added risk for GBS was 1.25 cases for every 1 million doses of the new vaccine, called Menactra.
Drug maker Sanofi Pasteur said it had already tested the vaccine on 10 000 people so far and found no cases of GBS. Menactra was first approved by the US government in January of 2005, and the CDC soon recommended routine vaccination for students entering high school and college.
Between March 2005 and September 2006, 17 people, most of them teenagers, developed GBS within 6 weeks of receiving a Menactra shot. But experts say a certain number of those cases would have occurred naturally. Meningitis is much more prevalent than GBS, they added, so an unvaccinated youth has about 10 times the risk of getting the illness than a vaccinated youth does of contracting GBS. (HealthDayNews)
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