The specialist journal Brain unveiled a study at the end of July which established a link between vaccination against the H1N1 influenza virus or influenza A. chronic sleep.
Narcolepsy manifests itself in abnormal sleep time and uncontrolled sleepiness at inappropriate times, for example at work or on the street. This rare disease affects one in 2,000 people.
In 2009 in France, 5.7 million people in France were vaccinated against H1N1 influenza with the Pandemrix or the Panenza, recalls Le Figaro, which reveals the information.
The study led by the team of Prof. Yves Dauvilliers, neurologist and director of the sleep laboratory at the Montpellier University Hospital, sought to measure the side effects of several vaccines: tetanus, H1N1, hepatitis B, diphtheria, etc. It was during their investigation that the researchers discovered that the H1N1 flu vaccine, be it Pandemrix or Panenza, caused narcolepsyin about sixty patients. “A single vaccine has links with narcolepsy: H1N”, underlines Professor Dauvilliers, quoted by Le Figaro.
Disabling disease
France would not be the only one affected by these undesirable effects. In Ireland and England too, people vaccinated against the H1N1 flu say they suffer from narcolepsy. A British study published in the British medical Journal and involving 75 children with narcolepsy even established that 11 of them had received the Pamderix vaccine against the H1N1 flu before the first symptoms appeared.
Ben Foy is one of these collateral victims of the vaccine. At 8 years old, he sometimes noses 20 times a day and falls without warning. He was vaccinated in January 2010 with Pandemrix. A few months later, the first symptoms of narcolepsy appeared. He is also affected by cataplexy, an effect associated with narcolepsy, which causes sudden drops in muscle tone triggered by an emotion such as great arousal.
On a daily basis, the boy drags his illness like a serious handicap which changed his life. “He had to quit football altogether because he sometimes collapsed on the pitch,” his mother told the Daily Mail.