The Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna do not cause conditions like female infertility, myocardial infarction, Bell palsy, or Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults.
This is according to a report by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that reviewed evidence for potential harms for 19 conditions associated with these vaccines.
There was not enough evidence involving children to draw conclusions about possible harms, the committee found, but it did conclude that there was evidence that these vaccines can cause myocarditis, although cases were rare.
The report follows a study published by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention showing no association between Covid-19 vaccination and sudden cardiac death among healthy young people, reports JAMA Network.
The committee’s evidence also suggests that the Janssen vaccine may cause Guillain-Barré syndrome and thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and more broadly, the committee concluded that vaccinations in general, not just from Covid-19 jabs, might cause certain shoulder injuries from the injection itself.
They found vaccination may cause acute subacromial/subdeltoid bursitis caused by direct injection of a vaccine into the bursa; acute rotator cuff tendinopathy caused by direct injection into or adjacent to a tendon; bone injury caused by direct injection into or adjacent to bone; and axial or radial nerve injury due to direct injection into or adjacent to the nerve.
Possible harms
The committee identified sufficient evidence to draw 20 conclusions about whether these vaccines could cause specific harms, and drew 65 conclusions where it did not find enough evidence to establish, accept, or reject a causal relationship.
The results of the report, which analysed studies conducted soon after vaccines were available, represent a “snapshot in time”, and might not fully reflect the real-world use of the vaccines, said author Dr George Isham.
“For example, the evidence does not address the real-world use of the Covid-19 vaccines in which many individuals received a ‘mix and match’ sequence of them. Many people vaccinated during the pandemic also received other vaccines, such as influenza, simultaneously.”
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CDC investigates 'relatively few' reports of myocarditis from Pfizer vaccination