The nation's top public health officials are alerting doctors that swine flu may cause seizures, after four children were hospitalized in Texas for neurological complications.
All four children fully recovered without complications after being treated at a Dallas hospital, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The announcement did not surprise doctors accustomed to seeing complications in the brain caused by the seasonal flu viruses that circulate every year.
"It's completely to be expected given that so far this novel H1N1 flu is behaving like the seasonal flu that we are familiar with," said Dr. Anne Mascona, a professor of pediatrics and microbiology at the Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Because flu-related brain complications are more common in children than in adults, and swine flu seems to infect children more often than adults, experts expect to see more cases of children who develop swine-flu-related neurological complications as the pandemic continues.
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Parents should not be alarmed, Mascona said, but if they notice a change in their child's personality or behavior, such as increased irritability or memory problems, soon after the onset of a respiratory illness, it might be swine-flu-related, and parents should alert their child's doctor as early as possible.
In the four children described in the disease centers' report, neurological problems — including seizures, confusion and delirium — followed the onset of respiratory symptoms within one to four days. The complications were less severe than those previously described in the medical literature as associated with seasonal flu, according to the report.
Neurological complications in children are among the most serious side effects of influenza, said Dr. Andrew T. Pavia, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah. Milder complications such as seizures or brain swelling are moderately common, whereas death occurs in only a couple of cases each year, Pavia said.
The U.S. may have as many as 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October, even though manufacturers worldwide are having serious trouble brewing shots, federal health officials said Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration may formally approve much of that vaccine before studies required to prove how well it works are completed, treating the new inoculations just like the recipe change that regular winter flu vaccine undergoes each year.
That doesn't mean mass vaccinations would start before key information from studies of thousands of volunteers is in, U.S. officials stressed Thursday.
