Seizures After Vaccination: Don't Blame the Vaccines

Fear of neurologic complications following vaccination has decreased parental vaccine acceptance. Although the risk for febrile seizures is elevated in the days after vaccination, such seizures may be the first manifestations of a seizure disorder. In an earlier retrospective study involving 14 children with epileptic encephalopathy originally thought to be vaccine related, 11 of them had Dravet syndrome, a genetic mutation affecting a neuronal sodium channel subunit. Their seizures were likely triggered — but not caused — by vaccination.

Now, researchers in the Netherlands have investigated the etiologies of seizures that occurred in 990 children ≤24 hours after receiving an inactivated vaccine, or 5 to 12 days after receiving a live attenu…