K.N. v. HHS - DTaP, seizures and resulting developmental/language delay (2025)

On November 12, 2019, Courtney Nina and Pedro Nina, as parents and natural guardians of K.N., a minor, filed a petition alleging that K.N. suffered seizures and resulting developmental delay caused by her April 11, 2018 vaccinations. The vaccinations included diphtheria-tetanus-acellular-pertussis (DTaP), influenza, pneumococcal conjugate (Prevnar-13), polio, rotavirus, and Hemophilus Influenza B (Hib).

K.N. was approximately six months old at the time of vaccination. The petition alleged that K.N. experienced seizures within 24 hours of vaccination, which led to developmental delays, specifically in language.

Petitioners argued that K.N. suffered a Table Injury of encephalopathy or, alternatively, that the DTaP vaccine caused the injury-in-fact. The Special Master reviewed medical records and expert opinions from Dr.

Marcel Kinsbourne for the petitioners and Drs. Gregory Holmes and Andrew MacGinnitie for the respondent.

The case was decided on the written record after Dr. Kinsbourne passed away.

The Special Master found that K.N. did not suffer a Table encephalopathy, as the criteria for acute encephalopathy were not met, and the white matter abnormality noted on MRI was nonspecific. Regarding the causation-in-fact argument, the Special Master found that while K.N. did have a febrile seizure within 24 hours of vaccination, which her treating physicians attributed to a fever possibly caused by the vaccine, there was insufficient evidence to causally link this seizure to a subsequent seizure disorder or developmental delay.

The Special Master found that the diagnoses of Rolandic epilepsy (BECTS) and epilepsy-aphasia spectrum, proposed by Dr. Kinsbourne, were not supported by the medical records or the opinions of the respondent's experts.

Dr. Holmes persuasively argued that K.N.'s condition was inconsistent with BECTS and Landau-Kleffner syndrome (LKS), and that her seizures were febrile and triggered by separate infections, not indicative of epilepsy.

Furthermore, the Special Master noted that K.N.'s gross motor delay predated her seizures, and her language delays were not definitively linked to the seizures. The Special Master also found that the "seizures beget seizures" theory, as applied by Dr.

Kinsbourne, was not persuasive in this case. The Special Master concluded that petitioners failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that K.N. suffered a vaccine-caused seizure disorder or developmental delay.

Therefore, the petition was denied. Petitioner's counsel was Vanessa Lee Brice.

Respondent's counsel was Mary Eileen Holmes. Special Master was Daniel T.

Horner.