Comments
Real-world data on vaccinations among employees at Mass General Brigham provide reassurances of the rarity of serious reactions after the administration of the Covid-19 vaccines and the ability to recover from them.
Lead author Kimberly Blumenthal, MD, MSc, co-director of the Clinical Epidemiology Program said: "The Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are the first vaccines of their kind, and they have remarkable efficacy and safety across all populations.”
Blumenthal added: “It is critical to have accurate information on allergic reactions to these vaccines, not only for our current situation but also because this new vaccine platform is so important for future pandemic responses."
Anaphylaxis
For the study, Blumenthal and her colleagues decided to carefully document all allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis.
Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening whole-body allergic reaction that was reported as a severe reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine in some cases.
The team analyzed employee surveys to estimate the incidence of allergic reactions after mRNA vaccines. They also employed multiple surveillance methods to identify the true incidence of anaphylaxis.
Among 52,805 employees who were surveyed after they received their first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, 2 per cent experienced allergic reactions, and anaphylaxis occurred at a rate of 2.47 per 10,000 individuals.
"To put this in perspective, this is largely comparable to anaphylactic reactions from common antibiotics," added Blumenthal.
The investigators noted that although the incidence of anaphylaxis was higher than that estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC put the rate at 0.025 to 0.11 per 10,000 vaccinations. However, it is still exceedingly low and should provide reassurances, especially for individuals with a history of food or drug allergies, the authors noted.
Co-senior author Paige Wickner, MD, MPH, medical director of the Department of Quality and Safety at Brigham and Women's Hospital said: "Another important aspect of our study is that all of our anaphylaxis cases recovered--no one had an anaphylactic shock or required a breathing tube, even temporarily."
The findings of the study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.