First, I want to address everyone, whether or not you have myasthenia gravis. If you’re able to get the flu vaccine, but haven’t yet, you should get on that as soon as possible. You’ll potentially save yourself a few miserable weeks in bed, and you’ll protect the people around you are especially vulnerable to the flu. Not only that, but CVS will give you $5 off a $25 purchase if you get a free vaccine there. I swear CVS doesn’t pay me to promote them, I just wanted to spread the word about a sweet deal.
With all that said, a new study came out that emphasizes that it’s especially important for people with myasthenia gravis (MG) to get their flu vaccination. Nobody likes upper respiratory infections (URIs), but for people with MG, it’s more than just an inconvenience. It can worsen MG symptoms, and cause potentially serious complications.
MG is an autoimmune disorder, that is not thought to be hereditary. The name myasthenia gravis comes from the Latin and Greek words for “grave muscle weakness.” Essentially, groups of voluntarily controlled muscle become weak, and tire out easily. For the majority of patients, this isn’t life-threatening. However, around 10% will develop dangerous breathing issues. To learn more about this rare disease, click here.
While many advocate the importance of MG patients receiving the vaccine to stop a potentially serious infection, some worry that it could case problems with the patients’ immune systems. Previous studies haven’t successfully shown that there’s a connection between the flu shot and MG safety.
However, this research team in Korea wanted to measure something they felt those studies were missing. They tested to see how the flu could fire up the risk of MG symptoms. The scientists looked into the histories of 258 MG patients who agreed to participate in the study. They determined whether an MG patient had received the vaccine or suffered from a URI the year before. They sorted patients who had a common cold, and ones who had fevers with sore throats or coughs into different categories.
Then they looked into how severe each patient’s MG symptoms were the following year, based on a self-reported 1-10 scale. 96 of the 256 participants reported a common cold, with just 25 reporting the more severe URI. 133 patients had received the vaccine.
The results were pretty jarring. Ten patients (40%) of severe URI group had experienced severe MG symptoms after the infection was over. Compare that to the two patients (1.5%) of the 133 participants who experienced aggravated MG symptoms after receiving the vaccine. The common cold group came somewhere in the middle– 15.6% suffered through worsening symptoms.
The study concluded that since the flu poses a greater risk to MG patients, doctors should encourage MG patients especially to vaccinate. Getting a flu shot is mildly inconvenient, and nobody’s idea of a good time. However, new research shows it’s a small step MG patients can take to prevent a crisis before it happens.
