(Press-News.org) New Haven, Conn. — When new COVID-19 vaccines were first administered two years ago, public health officials found an increase in cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, particularly among young males who had been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. It was unclear, however, what exactly was causing this reaction.
In a new study, Yale scientists have identified the immune signature of these heart inflammation cases.
These findings, published May 5 in the journal Science Immunology, rule out some of the theorized causes of the heart inflammation and suggest potential ways to further reduce the incidence of a still rare side effect of vaccination, the authors say.
Myocarditis is a generally mild inflammation of heart tissue which can cause scarring but is usually resolved within days. The increased incidence of myocarditis during vaccination was seen primarily in males in their teens or early 20s, who had been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines, which are designed to elicit immune responses specifically to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among males aged 12 to 17, about 22 to 36 per 100,000 experienced myocarditis within 21 days after receiving a second vaccine dose. Among unvaccinated males in this age group, the incidence of myocarditis was 50.1 to 64.9 cases per 100,000 after infection with the COVID-19 virus.
For the new study, the Yale research team conducted a detailed analysis of immune system responses in those rare cases of myocarditis among vaccinated individuals. The team was led by Carrie Lucas, associate professor of immunobiology, Akiko Iwasaki, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology, and Inci Yildirim, associate professor of pediatrics and epidemiology.
They found that the heart inflammation was not caused by antibodies created by the vaccine, but rather by a more generalized response involving immune cells and inflammation.
“The immune systems of these individuals get a little too revved up and over-produce cytokine and cellular responses,” Lucas said.
Earlier research had suggested that increasing the time between vaccination shots from four to eight weeks may reduce risk of developing myocarditis.
Lucas noted that, according to CDC findings, the risk of myocarditis is significantly greater in unvaccinated individuals who contract the COVID-19 virus than in those who receive vaccines. She emphasized that vaccination offers the best protection from COVID-19-related disease.
“I hope this new knowledge will enable further optimizing mRNA vaccines, which, in addition to offering clear health benefits during the pandemic, have a tremendous potential to save lives across numerous future applications,” said Anis Barmada, an M.D./Ph.D. student at Yale School of Medicine, who is a co-first author of the paper with Jon Klein, also a Yale M.D./Ph.D. student.
END
Yale study reveals insights into post-vaccine heart inflammation cases
2023-05-05
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
nTIDE April 2023 Jobs Report: Despite sharp decline, employment remains above pre-pandemic levels for people with disabilities
2023-05-05
East Hanover, NJ – May 5, 2023 –Declines in the April job numbers for people with disabilities raise concerns about the future of the job market, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). To assess whether this change signals a slowing of job gains for people with disabilities, nTIDE experts will look closely at the direction of next month’s employment indicators.
Month-to-Month ...
Systemic AL amyloidosis: Current approach and future direction
2023-05-05
“AL amyloidosis is a fatal disease and systemic therapy is required to prevent deposition of amyloid in other organs and prevent progressive organ failure.”
BUFFALO, NY- May 5, 2023 – A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on April 26, 2023, entitled, “Systemic AL amyloidosis: current approach and future direction.”
In this review, researchers Maroun Bou Zerdan, Lewis Nasr, Farhan Khalid, Sabine Allam, Youssef Bouferraa, Saba Batool, Muhammad Tayyeb, Shubham Adroja, Mahinbanu Mammadii, Faiz Anwer, Shahzad Raza, and Chakra P. Chaulagain from SUNY Upstate Medical University, University of Texas MD Anderson ...
Boston Children’s Hospital to help lead research in NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making
2023-05-05
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can drive cars, monitor and adjust the temperature in your home, and chat with you online. AI could help public health officials, community workers, and clinics efficiently direct and allocate resources and better target interventions to improve health outcomes during disasters and public health emergencies.
“The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a need for new approaches to resource allocation during public health crises—approaches that simultaneously serve our society’s most vulnerable communities, improve our overall health and well-being, and maximize impact,” ...
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs offers unlimited opportunities for emergency physicians
2023-05-05
Des Plaines, IL — There are unlimited opportunities for career growth in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health system and this option should be recognized by medical students considering emergency medicine as a potential career, and by emergency medicine residents as well. This is the message of a perspective piece titled, The hidden jewel of emergency medicine careers: Why it's time to explore the VA. The piece introduces the April 2023 special issue of Academic ...
Dr. Evanthia Galanis elected Alliance Group Chair-Elect
2023-05-05
The Alliance Board of Directors has elected Evanthia Galanis, MD, as Group Chair-Elect of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology at the 2023 Alliance Spring Virtual Group Meeting on May 5. Dr. Galanis will take office in November 2023 and will serve a six-year term.“I’m honored to be elected to serve as Group Chair of the Alliance,” Dr. Galanis said. “I am excited to lead an organization whose mission is to reduce the impact of cancer by uniting a broad community of scientists and clinicians who are committed to the prevention and treatment ...
New findings suggest increased monitoring needed to prevent lung disease in underground coal miners
2023-05-05
DENVER — (MAY 5, 2023) For the past two decades, there has been a major resurgence in progressive massive fibrosis (PMF), (also known as black lung) among coal miners, leading researchers from National Jewish Health and across the country to examine what job duties might be putting them at risk. Current federal regulations require routine monitoring of dust levels in specific “high risk” jobs in underground coal mines, mainly jobs near the coal seam where coal is mined from surrounding rock. During the study, crystalline silica, a component of coal mine dust, was found in the lungs of coal miners whose jobs had not been targeted for exposure monitoring based on current ...
Case report: former football player’s cognitive symptoms improved after study revealed alternative diagnosis and treatment
2023-05-05
Football players who have had repetitive head trauma and concussion are at heightened risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), an irreversible condition that leads to dementia. But not every case of cognitive decline means CTE, as illustrated by a new case study published by researchers from Mass General Brigham in Current Sports Medicine Reports.
In the publication, Adam Tenforde, MD, a physician in Mass General Brigham’s Sports medicine program and medical director of the Spaulding National Running Center, co-authored a study that described the case ...
UCF scientist uncovers roots of antibiotic resistance
2023-05-05
By Suhtling Wong | May 1, 2023 11:19 am
Bacteria naturally adapt to various environmental stimuli and as they mutate, these changes can make them resistant to drugs that would kill or slow their growth.
In a recent article published in PLoS Genetics, UCF College of Medicine microbiologist Dr. Salvador Almagro-Moreno uncovers the evolutionary origins of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria. His studies on the bacterium that causes ...
Archaea in a warming climate become less diverse, more predictable
2023-05-05
Led by Jizhong Zhou, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics at the University of Oklahoma, an international research team conducted a long term experiment that found that climate warming reduced the diversity of and significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
At the microbiological level, life can be described as belonging to one of three kingdoms – how species are described in relation to one another. Eukarya contains complex organisms like animals and ...
Helping health care providers support Black breastfeeding families
2023-05-05
PHILADELPHIA (May 5, 2023) - Despite breastfeeding being recommended for at least two years, only 36 percent of all infants are still breastfed at their first birthday. Black/African American mothers are least likely to initiate breastfeeding with initiation rates of only 74 percent compared to 90 percent of Asian mothers with a national average of 84 percent. Given the disparities in breastfeeding initiation, there are likely to be equivalent disparities in breastfeeding duration.
New research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) published in the journal Breastfeeding ...