Federal officials made the revelation in a CDC meeting this week.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials this week said they are investigating a link between a neurological disorder in older Americans and newly approved vaccines.
Vaccines for RSV, known as respiratory syncytial virus, might have caused cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), which has been described as a condition, officials told a CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and reporters on Thursday.
Those officials said that data suggests about two cases out of 100,000 people who have received the RSV vaccine developed the condition. In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Pfizer’s Abrysvo and Glaxo-Smith-Kline’s Arexvy shots for the virus.
Specifically, the CDC said that as of Feb. 16, it had detected 23 cases of GBS occurring within weeks of the RSV vaccination, according to reporters. Fifteen cases occurred in those who got the Pfizer RSV shot and eight occurred in the Arexvy shot.
“At this point, due to the uncertainties and limitations, these early data cannot establish if there is an increased risk for GBS after vaccination in this age group,” Dr. Thomas Shimabukuro, the head of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, told the meeting on Thursday.
The doctor, however, said it may be too early to see if there is an increased risk for the condition after vaccinations for RSV.
“We’re still in the early uptake phase of these new RSV vaccines,” he told STAT News on Thursday. He was the one who presented the RSV data at the CDC meeting.
“Some of these data and findings are based on small numbers of cases and relatively small numbers of doses administered,” he added in the interview. “And due to uncertainties and limitations, based on these early data we can’t establish if there is an increased risk for GBS after RSV vaccination in these individuals 60 and older.”
This month, the CDC official said, the agency would conduct a different analysis on the vaccine, adding that “better risk estimates will be forthcoming in the coming weeks and months.”
