seizures

Hollywood tends to depict all seizures with great drama as generalized convulsions. In the real world of an intensive care unit, they can go unnoticed without overt signs. And if the seizures are protracted, they can cause damage. New technology marries music and the mind, to prompt early detection by the untrained.
It's another vaccine success story, this time about rotavirus vaccines. Not only do the vaccines prevent the sometimes dangerous dehydration that accompanies this infection, they are also associated with a decreased occurrence of non-febrile seizures in infants and young children.
The news these past few weeks has been dominated with stories about vaccines: the effectiveness of the flu vaccine, the measles outbreak in Disneyland, the anti-vaxers holding strong to their beliefs that vaccines are harmful. Well, a new study published in
Giving a combination vaccine, MMR-V (MMR plus varicella-chickenpox) vaccines at one time as opposed to separately, increases the risk of febrile seizures in infants. But the absolute risk is extremely low either way, much lower than the risk of measles, and such seizures have no significant sequelae.