Canadian Health Officials See Bad Reactions to Flu Shots
November 25, 2009
ON Deadline
By Michael Winter
Canadian health officials are investigating what caused six severe allergic reactions to the H1N1 vaccine earlier this month, which the World Health Organization calls “an unusual number.”
The report comes amid signs that the worst of the pandemic might be over in Canada.
The vaccine triggered anaphylaxis, which causes breathing problems, low blood pressure and swelling of the throat, tongue, lips and eyes. It can be fatal.
The inoculations came from a batch of 172,000 doses of the Arepanrix vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, that was distributed across Canada. The unused batch was recalled and all six Canadians recovered.
Normally, one adverse reaction per 100,000 doses is expected. In several lots of vaccines, no adverse reactions have been reported.
“An unusual number of severe allergies to the vaccine have been detected in Canada,” World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham told AFP. “The Canadian authorities are conducting the appropriate investigations on the vaccines. … We need to understand what happened.”
GlaxoSmithKline Tells Canadian Doctors to Stop Using Swine Flu Vaccine
November 25, 2009
Caymanmama
Health officials regularly monitor vaccines for any signs of potential problems, including the occasional allergic reactions that do rarely occur each year.
GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman Gwenan White said that the pharmaceuticals company advised Canadian medical personnel last week to immediately stop using one specific batch of the vaccine while they proceed with investigations into the cause of the odd number of allergic reactions.
According to the AP, ix people in Canada had suffered an allergic reaction, said Tim Vail, the spokesman for Canada’s health minister. The batch contained about 170,000 doses. It was not immediately clear how many had been administered, although Vail said the majority had been.”
“We’re not seeing any thing wild or spooky or crazy about our vaccine at all,” Vail said.
White said no other doses of the vaccine around the world are part of the vaccines that are to be discontinued..
Swine Flu Vaccines Pulled in Canada due to Allergic Reaction
November 24, 2009
ABC News
by Meera Selva
Canadian doctors have been advised not to use a batch of 170,000 swine flu vaccines after six reports of serious allergic reactions among recipients, but there are no similar reports from other countries, pharmaceuticals company GlaxoSmithKline PLC said Tuesday.
Authorities routinely monitor vaccines for any signals of problems, such as the allergic reactions that do occur, rarely, every year. Company spokeswoman Gwenan White said that GlaxoSmithKline advised medical staff in Canada ast week to refrain from using one batch of the vaccine while they look into reports that that it might have caused more allergic reactions than normal.
Six people in Canada had suffered an allergic reaction, said Tim Vail, the spokesman for Canada’s health minister. The batch contained about 170,000 doses. It was not immediately clear how many had been administered, although Vail said the majority had been.
“We’re not seeing any thing wild or spooky or crazy about our vaccine at all,” Vail said, arguing it may have been a statistical anomaly that the reactions occurred.
GlaxoSmithKline is only investigating the one batch of its swine flu vaccine in Canada. White said no other doses of its swine flu vaccine around the world are affected.
White said U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline wrote to Canadian health care professionals advising them to stop using the batch on Nov. 18. She says a total of 7.5 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed in Canada.
Dr. Joel Kettner, Manitoba’s chief medical officer of health has said they are being cautious and are following the advice. He urged people not to be alarmed, saying that any allergic reactions occur shortly after inoculation, don’t last long and have not led to long-term health problems.
The provincial Alberta government was also holding back the vaccine, although it had not seen a jump in reactions.
GlaxoSmithKline is the world’s second largest drug maker by revenue. Its shares were up 0.08 percent on the London stock exchange at 1,278.50p ($21.19)
Students Have Allergic Reaction to H1N1 Vaccine
November 06, 2009
Wcbi
By Joey Barnes
According to The Mississippi State Department of Health two students at Caledonia High had an allergic reaction after receiving the H1N1 vaccination.
Six others developed shortness of breath but not the classic allergic reaction symptoms. All were taken to Baptist Golden Triangle and have been released.
“It’s just an unfortunate situation that we made an attempt to provide a service to benefit children, and sometimes with the best laid plans you have problems and there was an issue today,” says Lowndes County Schools Superintendent Mike Halford.
“When you’ve got a bunch of kids and they’re all together getting shots and getting nervous about seeing the one in front of them get a shot, and then somebody starts saying I feel bad and they start thinking, well I feel bad too,” says Mississippi State Department of Health District 4 (interim) & 6 Health Officer Dr. Rebecca James.
Hundreds of vaccinations came from the same batch that were given to Columbus and Lowndes County students and the Department of Health doesn’t believe it is a bad batch of vaccinations.
“With three cases of hives out of 10,000 doses given is a very mild reaction rate,” says James.
Vaccinations were suspended at Caledonia but continued at New Hope. Columbus Schools didn’t report any health problems with any students.
Scientists Find An Itchiness Cell
August 6, 2009
BBC News
US scientists have pinpointed a type of nerve cell in mice which appears to generate the itch sensation.
The finding suggests itching is not simply a low-level variation of pain – but a distinct sensation.
A team from Washington University found itch and pain signals seem to be transmitted along different pathways in the spinal cord.
The study, published online by the journal Science, raises hopes of new treatments for itching.
Many scientists have regarded itching as just a less intense version of pain.
“ It could pinpoint targets for future treatments for itch, a common and sometimes debilitating condition produced by more than 50 diseases ” – Dr Glenn Giesler University of Minnesota
They spent decades searching in vain for itch-specific nerve cells to explain how the brain perceives itch differently from pain.
The latest study finally pinpoints these cells – but shows that the low-level pain theory was wrong.
The researchers were able to knock out the itch response in mice without affecting the animals’ ability to sense pain and attempt to avoid it.
Lead researcher Dr Zhou-Feng Chen said: “This finding has very important therapeutic implications.
“We have shown that particular neurons are critical for the itching sensation but not for pain, which means those cells may contain several itch-specific receptors or signalling molecules that can be explored or identified as targets for future treatment or management of chronic itching.”
First gene
The same team identified an “itch gene”, called GRPR, in 2007.
This time, they injected the spinal cord of mice with a toxin that killed off cells in which the gene was active.
By doing this they were able to eliminate the scratch response in some animals completely.
However, the same animals continued to respond normally to pain.
This showed that the key cells were active in transmitting the sensation of itching, but not the sensation of pain.
There are two major types of itching. One, caused by bug bites or allergic reactions, is linked to the presence of the chemical histamine.
But most chronic, severe itching is not linked to the chemical – and does not respond to standard anti-histamine treatment.
However, mice whose itch cells had been destroyed did not scratch, regardless of the type of itching agent to which they were exposed.
Dr Glenn Giesler, an expert in itch at the University of Minnesota, said: “I believe this work is very important.
“It could pinpoint targets for future treatments for itch, a common and sometimes debilitating condition produced by more than 50 diseases.”
However, Professor Gil Yosipovitch, another expert in the field at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, said the pathway uncovered by the latest study was not the only one that could transmit the itch sensation.
He said other work suggested there were other pathways which transmitted both the sensations of itch and pain.
He also warned that there was a long way to go from work on mice to the development of new drugs for humans.
However, he added: “It could surely help develop new treatments for itch.
“As yet there are no general purpose anti-pruritic (anti-itch) drugs that target the neural system.”
Common Chemo Drug Kills Women
July 02, 2009
Natural News
by Sherry Baker
Chemotherapy drugs used in standard cancer treatments are associated with a huge list of side effects, from hair loss and nausea to nerve pain, sexual problems and mouth sores. Now a new study from the Research on Adverse Drug Events and Reports (RADAR) pharmacovigilance program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has identified another side effect caused by a commonly used chemotherapy drug — death.
A startling number of women have died from a severe allergic reaction after being injected with Cremophor-based paclitaxel, a solvent-administered taxane chemotherapy. What makes this extra tragic is that the researchers found some of the dead women had already been treated for early stage breast cancer and could well have been cured — if the chemo prescribed to prevent a theoretical recurrence of cancer in the future had not killed them.
The report, presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology held recently in Orlando, Florida, found there were 287 unique cases of hypersensitivity reactions submitted to the FDA’s Adverse Event Report System between 1997 and 2007 in patients who received the solvent-laced chemo drug. Of these, an alarming 38 percent, 109, died. Because adverse event reports usually only document from one to 10 percent of the actual incidence of serious side effects, the number of hypersensitivity reactions as well as deaths is probably much greater.
The severe allergic reactions are believed to be caused by the chemical solvent used to dissolve some chemo drugs before they can be injected into the blood stream. Two of the women who died from an allergic reaction had early-stage breast cancer, which had already been surgically removed. They were being subjected to the Cremophor-containing paclitaxel to supposedly keep the cancer from returning.
Although both of these patients were given additional drugs before the chemotherapy to reduce the risk of hypersensitivity reactions, they still died. In fact, RADAR researchers found that 22 percent of all the deaths from the chemo drug occurred in patients who had been pre-treated with medications to prevent hypersensitivity reactions. Another 15 percent of these chemo patients experienced life-threatening respiratory arrest.
“The deaths of women with early-stage breast cancer are particularly disturbing because without the adverse reaction, they could have likely had 40 years of life ahead of them,” study leader Charles Bennett, M.D., RADAR program coordinator and a professor of hematology/oncology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School, stated in a media release.
“Patients receiving Cremophor-based paclitaxel should be given medications to prevent hypersensitivity reactions, but what is sobering, as the study has shown and as the black-box warning indicates, women suffer anaphylaxis despite receiving steroid premedication,” he added. “Physicians may also want to consider exploring other alternative chemotherapy options that do not include Cremophor.”
Cremophor-containing paclitaxel has been associated with a wide range of hypersensitivity reactions, ranging from mild skin irritations to cardiac collapse. “The results of our review suggest that physicians should be vigilant in monitoring the safety of their patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment,” said Dr. Bennett, who also is the A.C. Buehler Professor in Economics and Aging at the Feinberg School and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.
Click here for the full report from NaturalNews.com
