ProQuad Vaccine withdrawn due to an increased risk of febrile seizures

By Ashton Daigle

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recently withdrawn its preference for a four-in-one vaccine to protect against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox due to an increased risk of febrile seizures, according to an Associated Press report.

The CCD committee rendered its decision on the ProQuad vaccine based on results of a study which recently appeared in the journal Pediatrics, the Associated Press reports. The research was performed by the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center.

Dr. Nicola Klein, the study’s lead investigator and director of the center, told the AP that children aged 12 to 23 months who received the vaccine had double the rate of seizures as children who got separate vaccinations for MMR and chickenpox, which is equal to around one convulsion per 2,000 vaccinations.

The reactions, which occur a week to 10 days after vaccination, are not life-threatening and usually resolve on their own.

Kaiser researchers used the government’s Vaccine Safety Datalink to compare seizure and fever reactions among 83,107 one-year-olds who had combined MMR and chickenpox vaccinations with the reactions of 376,354 toddlers who received separate vaccines.

Chicago based pediatrician Dr. Erik Johnson, MD, selected as a Chicago Top Doctor by TopTierMD as a top rated pediatrician in Chicago, said that one of the pitfalls of the study was that it was a very large and that if ProQuad vaccines were not noted in a medical chart, then results could possibly be skewed.

“Really, our main issues with this vaccine have more or less come and gone,” Dr. Johnson said. “It wasn’t really a vaccine that a lot of us were using in the first place. Most of my colleagues use the standard measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and use a separate vaccine for the chickenpox, as it’s almost always been done.”

Johnson said another possible flaw with the study is that, to his knowledge, researchers did not look at the effects on children in the four- to six-year-old age range, which is around the time the next battery of these types of vaccines are usually given.

“I think results from that age bracket may have been telling and may have helped form a more complete picture because kids at that age,” Dr. Johnson said. “The whole rationale for the four-in-one stick was so that kids wouldn’t have to have so many pokes. Children in this older age bracket are the ones who are a little more nervous about getting stuck, however, because they’re a little older and know what to expect”

Dr. Erik Johnson, MD, was selected by TopTierMD as a Chicago Top Doctor and is considered Best in Pediatrics in Chicago. He specializes in general pediatric care from birth through adolescence.