He used to love nothing more than a giggle with his friends.But now five-year-old Joshua Hadfield is afraid to laugh because, since developing a rare sleeping disorder, it causes him to lose control of his body and nod off for hours.
His mother Caroline believes he has contracted narcolepsy with cataplexy after having a swine flu vaccination. It is the first case of its kind to be made public.
Within days of having the Pandemrix jab in January last year, Joshua began sleeping for 18 hours a day and falling over when he felt a strong surge of emotion.
Mrs Hadfield, from Frome in Somerset, said: ‘He changed from being a happy, energetic child to a depressed, angry child.
‘He used to be on the go all day but now he gets depressed watching his friends play when he can’t. His aggression is frightening. He kicks me, hits me and throws things at me. If you try to wake him up when he’s sleeping he’ll go ballistic. The change has been horrendous.’
Mrs Hadfield and her husband Charlie, a print finisher, have to collect their son from school in a pushchair because he cannot manage the two-minute walk home. And teachers have even put up a bed in the canteen in case he needs a place to sleep.
The European Medicines Agency is now investigating whether the swine flu jab could be responsible for Joshua’s condition, as well as five other cases in the UK.
The probe began after a rise in cases of narcolepsy in children given Pandemrix, which is produced by GlaxoSmithKline, in Finland and Sweden. Last month experts in Finland discovered that children who had the jab were nine times more likely to become narcoleptic than those who did not. Read More
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