Scientists retract narcolepsy study linked to GSK vaccine

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Scientists retract narcolepsy study linked to GSK vaccine

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters - Scientists who believed they had started to decipher links between a GlaxoSmithKline H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine and the sleep disorder narcolepsy have retracted a study after saying they cannot replicate their findings. The paper, originally published in the journal Science Translational Medicine in December 2013, suggested narcolepsy can sometimes be triggered by a scientific phenomenon known as "molecular mimicry," offering a possible explanation for its link to GSK's "swine flu" vaccine, Pandemrix. The results appeared to show that the debilitating disorder, characterized by sudden sleepiness and muscle weakness, could be set off by an immune response to a portion of a protein from the H1N1 flu virus that is very similar to a region of a protein called hypocretin, which is key to narcolepsy. GSK, which has been funding Mignot's research into links between the vaccine and narcolepsy, said in a statement it believed "the original scientific hypothesis remains a valid one that needs to be further explored".

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