[Research] Just came across this....

[epileric]

This study, done in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that despite remaining low, Pertussis (Whooping Cough) almost doubles the probability of contracting epilepsy.

Results We identified 4700 patients with pertussis (48% male), of whom 90 developed epilepsy during the follow-up. The cumulative incidence of epilepsy at age 10 years was 1.7% (95% CI, 1.4%-2.1%) for patients with pertussis and 0.9% (95% CI, 0.8%-1.0%) for the matched comparison cohort. The corresponding adjusted overall hazard ratio was 1.7 (95% CI, 1.3-2.1).

Hospital-Diagnosed Pertussis Infection in Children and Long-term Risk of Epilepsy

 

[Ruth]

Hi, this is very interesting. I wonder if those with Whooping Cough are the reasons why some people "outgrow" their epilepsy?

 

[Dutch mom]

I know several children whose epilepsy was onset after their vaccination for whooping cough.

 

[Kgartner]

I know several children whose epilepsy was onset after their vaccination for whooping cough.

While I hesitate to post anything that threatens to go down the rabbit-hole of vaccine discussions, I do feel the need to point out that the study in question was exploring the relationship between the pertussis ILLNESS and epilepsy, not the pertussis vaccination. The study found a highly increased incidence (almost double) of epilepsy in children who had confirmed cases of pertussis as children. These are hospital-diagnosed cases of pertussis - i.e. children who definitely had the illness (the bacteria in question can be tested for), not people who self-report.

This was a very preliminary population-based study, so it is premature to draw any conclusions from it. However, if the link between pertussis illness and epilepsy is borne out in future studies, immunization against pertussis could actually decrease the incidence of epilepsy.

 

[Ruth]

I found two interesting points in the Jama article.

Exposures inpatient or hospital-based outpatient diagnosis of Pertussis.

Conclusions and Relevance In Denmark, risk of epilepsy was increased in children with hospital-diagnosed-pertussis infections compared with the general population;however, the absolute risk was low.

Epileric, thank you for bringing this to our attention.