Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Linked to Heart Inflammation Risk in Real-World Study

Real-world data from Israel linked Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to an elevated risk of heart inflammation, researchers said this week.

Israeli scientists found that vaccination likely caused myocarditis, or heart inflammation, in one to five people per 100,000 who wouldn’t have otherwise suffered the condition.

However, they also said that getting COVID-19 was linked to a higher risk—with 11 inflammation events out of 100 attributed to the disease.

Most of the heart inflammation cases post-vaccination were in young males. The 21 people who had myocarditis in the vaccinated group had a median age of 25, and 90.9 percent were men.

“We estimated that the BNT162b2 vaccine resulted in an increased incidence of a few adverse events over a 42-day follow-up period. Although most of these events were mild, some of them, such as myocarditis, could be potentially serious,” they said, referring to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

“However, our results indicate that SARS-CoV-2 infection is itself a very strong risk factor for myocarditis, and it also substantially increases the risk of multiple other serious adverse events. These findings help to shed light on the short- and medium-term risks of the vaccine and place them in clinical context. Further studies will be needed to estimate the potential of long-term adverse events.”

The research analyzed adverse events reported among 884,828 vaccinated people and an equal number of people who didn’t receive a vaccine, as well as a cohort of more than 240,000 people who contracted COVID-19. It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Aug. 25. Dr. Ran Balicer, of the Clalit Health Services in Tel Aviv, led the research group. They were funded by Harvard Medical School and the Clalit Research Institute.

A Pfizer spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the company is aware of “rare reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, predominantly in male adolescents and...

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