In December, Outi Vaarala of the University of Helsinki and her colleagues had reported that Pandemrix contained a much higher level of nucleoprotein than a GSK vaccine called Arepanrix, which was associated with a much smaller
risk for narcolepsy.
Palm alerted Swedish health authorities, and subsequent population - wide studies in Sweden, Finland, Ireland and the United Kingdom suggested that vaccination
for H1N1 — but only with the Pandemrix vaccine — had increased the
risk of developing
narcolepsy between four - and 13-fold in children and adolescents, and between two - and four-fold in adults.
Not only can
narcolepsy result in dangerous situations, but there is also an increased
risk for REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), which involves violently acting out dreams.