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Fascinating article in Medpage Today. It is amazing how little was known about the vaccines prior to starting the mass vaccination. It should sober up people who think that a government public health entity saying something is “safe and effective” means anything. Various governments researchers are conducting new studies and finding disturbing data. Undoubtedly there is much more to discover over time about all of these vaccines.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/92022

From VIPIT to VITT: Thrombosis and COVID Vaccines
— More data support link between adenovirus vector vaccines, blood clotting, and low platelets

As of April 4, 169 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein (which drains blood from the digestive system) thrombosis have been reported in the European drug safety database.

The agency said it had received 79 reports of blood clots with low platelets in the U.K., as of March 31. Of these, 44 were CVST and 35 were thromboses in major veins. These events occurred among 51 women and 28 men ages 18 to 79 years, among whom 19 died (13 women, 6 men). Of those who died, 11 were under age 50, and three were under 30. Fourteen had CVST with thrombocytopenia and five had thrombosis with thrombocytopenia.

PRAC reviewed 62 cases of CVST and 24 cases of thrombosis in the splanchnic vein reported in EudraVigilance (the European drug safety database), as of March 22. Most cases were in women under age 60 years, and most occurred within two weeks of the first dose of the vaccine. Eighteen people died.

On Friday, the EMA said the same problem may be occurring with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which, like AstraZeneca’s, uses an adenovirus vector to deliver genetic code for coronavirus antigens.

EMA said one “plausible” explanation for the phenomenon is that the vaccine may trigger an autoimmune immune reaction leading to an “atypical heparin-induced-thrombocytopenia like disorder,” for which specific risk factors have yet to be identified.

Shortly after these problems started to surface, researchers in Germany and Norway quickly identified an autoantibody called platelet factor 4 antibody that appeared to be linked to the syndrome. Platelet factor 4 antibody causes heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), a rare clotting disorder that affects 1%-2% of people after exposure to heparin. In rare cases, platelet factor 4 antibody has been associated with CVST.

On April 9 2021, the German team lead by Andreas Greinacher, MD, PhD, of the Medical University of Greifswald in Germany, published a case series about the issue in the New England Journal of Medicine. It included 11 patients in Germany and Austria who presented with unusual thromboses and moderate to severe thrombocytopenia, five to 16 days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. None of these patients had received heparin in the past. Nine were women, and the median age was 36 (range 22-49). Five patients had more than one clotting event: nine had CVST, three had splanchnic vein thrombosis, three had pulmonary embolism, four had other thromboses, and five had disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). Six patients died.

Concurrent with the German team, the Norwegian team published a case series, also in the New England Journal of Medicine, involving five patients with this syndrome after the AstraZeneca vaccine; they also proposed to call it VITT. All patients in this series had high levels of platelet factor 4 autoantibodies without past exposure to heparin. Five had major cerebral thrombosis, and three died.

“These results strengthen the view that vaccination may have triggered the syndrome,” wrote Nina H Schultz, MD, PhD, of Oslo University Hospital, and colleagues. “Although rare, VITT is a new phenomenon with devastating effects for otherwise healthy young adults and requires a thorough risk-benefit analysis.”