It is the largest and most comprehensive scientific study to date on the risk of heart muscle inflammation after receiving a CoV vaccination. At the beginning of the vaccination campaign in 2021, cases of myocarditis related to vaccination against the coronavirus were frequent, but extremely rare. Sweden and Denmark therefore even suspended the allocation of individual vaccines.
A study with 42.8 million Britons has now shown that heart muscle disease does occur after vaccination, but the risk is much lower than after infection with the virus. The ones just published in the journal Circulation Results thus substantiate previous investigations, such as one Israeli study from August 2021.
All major vaccines included
For the current investigation, the British team analyzed around a statistician Martina Patone from the University of Oxford, the data of all persons over the age of 13 who received at least one vaccination against the coronavirus in England between December 2020 and December 2021.
During this period, almost 3,000 people had to be treated in hospital for myocarditis or died from heart muscle inflammation. Less than a third of them – a total of 617 people – fell ill in the first 28 days after vaccination against the corona virus.
“In view of the large amount of data, we were able to say that the risk of myocarditis after vaccination is very low, especially compared to heart muscle disease after infection with the coronavirus,” Patone said in a press release. The data show that people are eleven times more likely to develop myocarditis after infection than after receiving vaccination.
Differences related to age and gender
In addition to distinguishing between the vaccines used, the population was divided into several test groups according to age, gender and possible previous illnesses. The group that received the mRNA vaccine from BioNTech-Pfizer made up the largest proportion.
In all groups, the risk of myocarditis was greater after CoV infection than after vaccination. The only exception was a second or more dose with the Moderna vaccine, particularly in men under the age of 40.
“It’s important to understand that myocarditis is rare, even after vaccination,” he said Nicholas Mills, co-author of the study and cardiologist at the University of Edinburgh. The epidemiologist Julia Hippsley-Cox from the University of Oxford, meanwhile, explained how the study can affect further vaccination campaigns: “The results are valuable for future recommendations on the use of the vaccines, especially for vaccination in younger people,” says Hippsley-Cox.