COVID-19 Vaccines ‘May Trigger’ Rheumatic Inflammatory Diseases: Study

A new review suggests that COVID vaccines "May trigger" rheumatic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, including arthritis, vasculitis, lupus, and adult-onset Still's disease.

On average, patients developed rheumatic diseases 11 days after vaccine administration, according to the study.

Rheumatic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases involve inflammation that manifests in the joints, tendons, muscles, and bones due to an unknown cause.

Almost 57 percent of the injured patients received the Pfizer vaccine, nearly a quarter received the AstraZeneca vaccine, and 12 percent of the rheumatic diseases manifested after the administration of the Moderna vaccine.

Rheumatic diseases may be less common than myocarditis, a known adverse event of COVID vaccination.

The following are rheumatic diseases that were included in this first-ever systematic review of new-onset R-MIDs after COVID vaccination.

Sixty-six cases of diseases affected the connective tissues.

Less common diseases include polymyalgia rheumatica, reported in 21 people.

The authors reasoned that the vaccine may have been a "Trigger" for the rheumatoid diseases.

Some of the patients might have been predisposed to rheumatic diseases, the authors reasoned.

If the spike proteins induced by the COVID-19 vaccines are similar to the original viral spike proteins, then the vaccine spike proteins may also trigger autoimmunity.

Another possibility is that mRNA vaccines may trigger the formation of inflammasomes.