# 4641
In late April we began seeing reports of an unexpected number of adverse side effects among young children in Australia who had received CSL Ltd.’s Fluvax seasonal flu vaccine.
The total number of reports were small (several hundred) out of tens of thousands of shots given, but significantly higher than normal.
Most of the side effects were related to fever, with some children experiencing febrile convulsions. Others experienced nausea and vomiting, or injection site inflammation (see Australia Investigating Adverse Vaccine Reactions).
There was one suspected vaccine related death, that of a 2 year old girl named Ashley, who died the day after receiving the shot (see Australian Vaccine Investigation Widens).
But as we’ve seen many times in the past, correlation doesn’t always imply causation.
And in this case, after nearly two months of investigation, the coroner has been unable to find a link between the vaccine and the child’s death.
Child's death not linked to flu shot
June 12, 2010 - 12:29PM
AAP
A coroner's autopsy has found no evidence to link a two-year-old Brisbane girl's death with a flu shot she received a day before she died.
Ashley Epapara was found dead in her cot on April 9, a day after she and her twin sister were given a seasonal influenza vaccination.
A Queensland Health pathologist provided autopsy results to the Queensland Coroner which found no evidence to link the seasonal flu vaccination to Ashley's death.
Despite the fact that numerous post mortem tests were performed, a definitive cause of death has not been established.
While some might view this finding as `convenient’, the truth is, an inability to determine the cause of death happens fairly often.
In fairness, saying `they’ve found no evidence to link the death to the vaccine’ isn’t quite the same as saying they have `proof that the vaccine didn’t cause the death’.
Still, I’m reasonably reassured by these findings (at least pending further developments), and take this as a pretty good sign that the vaccine was not the culprit in this tragedy.
A moratorium on giving this seasonal flu shot to children under the age of 5 was issued in late April, and on June 1st CSL recalled the remainder of their pediatric flu vaccine (see Australia: CSL Recalls Pediatric Flu Vax.
Flu vaccines have historically been very safe, and so why this particular formulation should have produced this number of febrile reactions in young children remains a mystery.
One that public health officials and scientists will no doubt be watching to see if it repeats elsewhere in the world later in the year.
