People who have suffered from myocarditis after receiving an mRNA-based test COVID-19[feminine] The vaccine was found to have consistently higher levels of circulating spike protein compared to those who also received an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine but did not develop myocarditis, according to results of a new study.
to study, published Jan. 4 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, sought to better understand the immune profiles — also called immunoprofiles — of people with myocarditis after receiving an mRNA-based vaccine.
From January 2021 to February 2022, researchers prospectively obtained blood samples from 61 adolescents and young adults, all of whom had been vaccinated with either the Pfizer or Modern COVID-19[feminine] mRNA vaccine.
Of the group, 16 had been hospitalized with myocarditis after the COVID-19 vaccination and presented to Massachusetts General for Children or Boston Children’s Hospital with chest pain. The other 45 people were used as “healthy, asymptomatic, age-matched” control subjects in the study; they did not show symptoms of myocarditis after being vaccinated. The researchers did not include any unvaccinated people as control subjects in the study.
“We performed extensive antibody profiling, including testing for SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral responses and assessment of autoantibodies or antibodies to the human-relevant virome, T cell analysis specific to SARS-CoV-2 SARS-CoV-2 and cytokines and SARS-CoV-2 antigen profiling,” the authors said.
Results
The researchers reported what they called a “notable finding” that “markedly elevated levels of full-length spike protein (33.9 ± 22.4 pg/mL), unrelated to antibodies, were detected in the plasma of individuals with post-vaccination myocarditis, whereas no free peak was detected in asymptomatic vaccinated control subjects (unpaired t-test; P<0.0001).
A p-value of less than 0.05 would be considered statistically significant.
Otherwise, they found that in the myocarditis group, “adaptive immunity and T-cell responses were essentially indistinguishable from those of age-matched asymptomatic vaccinated control subjects”, although the myocarditis group saw “a modest increase of cytokine production.
“The immunoprofile of post-vaccination myocarditis is, however, distinct from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and delayed post-inflammatory MIS-C disease,” the researchers noted.
They said that in the myocarditis cohort, they found “no evidence of autoantibody production, concurrent viral infections, or excessive antibody responses to anti-SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines. “.
The authors said their study “does not distinguish” whether elevated levels of circulating spike protein “are the cause or consequence” of myocarditis in vaccinated patients. They also noted that not all patients with myocarditis had detectable levels of circulating spike protein.
The results “suggest that administration of anti-spike antibodies, if spike antigenemia is detected, could potentially prevent or reverse post-vaccination myocarditis,” the article reads. Free spike protein circulating in the bloodstream that is not bound by anti-spike antibodies is called “spike antigenemia”.
The authors wrote that their findings could help better understand the complications associated with mRNA vaccines and guide future research regarding COVID-19 vaccine design and dosing.
“These results do not alter the benefit/risk ratio favoring vaccination against COVID-19 to prevent serious clinical consequences”, write the authors.
They acknowledge that a limitation of the study is the relatively small sample size. Additionally, people in the study were “not equally balanced” between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, they wrote, noting, “Our entire adolescent control cohort and the majority of our myocarditis cohort were received on [Pfizer] vaccine (n = 15).
Mimi Nguyen Ly is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. It covers US news and world news. Contact her at mimi.nl@epochtimes.com
0 Comments