Estimation of the Incidence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome During Pregnancy in the United States

Tanya R Myers; Natalie L McCarthy; Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos; Saad B Omer

doi:10.1093/ofid/ofz071

Estimation of the Incidence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome During Pregnancy in the United States

Open Forum Infect Dis. 2019 Mar 15;6(3):ofz071. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofz071. eCollection 2019 Mar.

Authors

Tanya R Myers¹, Natalie L McCarthy¹, Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos¹, Saad B Omer^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Immunization Safety Office, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.
² Departments of Epidemiology and Global Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
³ Emory Vaccine Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Abstract

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an adverse event of interest after vaccination, yet few data are available for background rates during pregnancy. We confirmed 2 cases of incident GBS and estimated an incidence of 2.8 confirmed GBS cases per million person-years (95% confidence interval, 0.5-9.3), indicating rare occurrence. Our findings will help inform safety assessments of Zika vaccines in pregnant populations.

Keywords: Guillain-Barré syndrome; Vaccine Safety Datalink; pregnancy.

Grants and funding

T32 AI074492/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/United States