[Vaccinal status in children with seizures: a retrospective study conducted in the Bordeaux child hospital]
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Insights
Children with seizure history are less vaccinated than their peers. This highlights a need to improve vaccination rates in epileptic children, as standard contraindications do not explain the disparities in DTP and MMR vaccine coverage.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Neurology
- Vaccinology
- Public Health
Background:
- Vaccination is crucial for child health but feared by some parents, especially for children with a history of seizures.
- High-risk populations, including epileptic children, may face unique challenges regarding vaccine uptake.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of seizure history on vaccination practices in children.
- To compare vaccination status between children with and without a history of seizures.
Main Methods:
- A retrospective study was conducted by neurology and pediatric emergency departments.
- Compared vaccination records of 55 children with seizure history against 109 children without seizure history.
Main Results:
- Both groups exhibited insufficient vaccination coverage overall.
- Significantly lower vaccination coverage for DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) and MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines was observed in children with seizure history (P=0.017 and P=0.004, respectively).
- No significant difference in hepatitis B vaccination coverage was found between the groups.
Conclusions:
- The observed disparities in DTP and MMR vaccination are not attributable to standard vaccine contraindications.
- There is a critical need to enhance vaccination coverage among children with epilepsy.
Unlabelled:
Vaccination is a common act in medicine. Some serious side effects are always feared in a preventive action, mainly among high-risk patients such as epileptic children or children having already experienced a seizure.
Objectives:
To study consequences of such background on the vaccine medical practice.
Population And Methods:
A retrospective study comparing the vaccine statute of children with or without case history of seizures was carried out by the neurologic and paediatric emergencies departments. The study compared 55 with seizures versus 109 without.
Results:
On the whole, the 2 groups were insufficiently vaccinated. A statistically significant difference was highlighted between the 2 groups for the vaccination coverage by vaccine DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) (P=0.017) and MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) (P=0.004). However, concerning the vaccination against hepatitis B, no difference was found.
Conclusion:
The usual contra-indications of these vaccines do not explain this difference and progress must be made to improve the vaccination coverage of epileptic children.
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