“As a blood clot expert, I can tell you that this is the blood clotting disease we have seen in our lives,” said Dr. Alex Spyropoulos, a professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York, said.
‘I’m been doing this for a quarter of a century. I’ve never seen these levels of blood clots. ‘
They therefore feel ironic that the fear of a much, much rarer type of blood clot can now deter people from being vaccinated.
Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended a break to release Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen coronavirus vaccine while experts iinvestigate whether it can cause blood clots and, if so, what to do about it.
The European Medicines Agency said on Tuesday it had found a possible link but said the overall benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks. For use in the EU, the agency said the vaccine should contain a warning about ‘unusual blood clots with low platelets’ as ‘very rare side effects’.
The CDC’s Immunization Practices Advisory Committee met last week to discuss the issue, and decided to wait for more information following the cases of six women who developed a very unusual type of blood clot after receiving J & J’s vaccine, as well as others. possible cases were discussed. They will meet again Friday to make recommendations, which could include an extra warning to help vaccine recipients and doctors look for the symptoms, or restrictions on who should get the J&J vaccine.
Whatever the risk of vaccines, experts agree that it is very low.
“You have just as much risk of being struck by lightning as getting one of these rare blood clots,” Spyropoulos told CNN.
Various risk factors
According to the CDC, blood clots are generally very common – affecting 900,000 Americans a year. They kill an estimated 100,000 people annually. Particularly common are blood clots in the brain. About 795,000 people get strokes annually in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association. The group estimates that 10-15% of these in adults are younger than 45.
Risk factors for common blood clots include surgery, accidents, cancer treatments and even sitting for too long, said Dr. Mark Crowther, a hematologist and thrombosis expert from the American Society of Hematology, noted.
“There are some weak risk factors – for example, airlines flying to Hawaii from Los Angeles,” Crowther told CNN. “Prolonged car rides are risk factors,” added Crowther, chair of the Department of Medicine at McMaster University in Canada.
And being infected with coronavirus increases this already common risk.
“The vaccine undoubtedly reduces the risk of any of the Covid blood clots dramatically,” Crowther said.
“The chance of an immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia or VITT being caused by a vaccine is one in a million,” Spyropoulos said.
“The chance of you being hospitalized with Covid is about one in 100 for the adult population. The chance of getting a blood clot once you are admitted to hospital is probably one in five or one in six. ” The risk rises to 1 in 3 for people in the ICU, Spyropoulos said.
“The benefits of any vaccine outweigh the risks,” he said.
“This complication of the vaccine is terribly rare. There will definitely be more people killed in the United States with a gun than by these complications,” Crowther agrees.
The rare blood clots attached to vaccines are a species that is evident. They block the veins leading from the brain and cause intense headaches or severe abdominal pain.
But they develop slowly and give people the chance to get the right treatment – if they seek it in time.
Now media reports are starting to surface about people getting more common blood clots after being vaccinated. It is unlikely to be caused by the vaccine, but it is difficult for people who are not trained in medicine to know the difference, Crowther said.
Vaccination, especially against Covid, is a memorable event, and it is natural if people suffer from a health problem shortly after being vaccinated to associate it with the vaccine.
“Vaccine hesitation is a real problem. There is no way an average person can understand the extent of the risks,” Crowther said. The results can be more deadly than the blood clots.
Uncomplicated treatment
The good news is that it is not complicated to treat VITT, the experts agreed.
“Any hospital in the United States would be well positioned to deal with these blood clotting complications,” Crowther said.
What is tentatively important is that doctors avoid using another common blood thinner, known as heparin. Heparin itself can cause the same antibody reaction to be seen in VITT – and it was actually doctors familiar with the heparin-related reaction who noticed what could happen to the vaccines and blood clots.
The signs of this rare reaction include not only blood clots but also a low level of platelets, which helps blood to clot.
It seems like a contradiction, but Spyropoulos says an immune response in which antibodies target platelets is underway. “They form a complex that causes the platelets to contract,” he said.
The platelets disappear from circulation as they get stuck together. “You see some kind of rubbish,” Spyropoulos said.