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meInflammation of the spinal cord, usually caused by a serious viral infection, is the type of serious complication that is best avoided immediately after vaccination. And yet it surprised a volunteer in the course of the vaccination registry study at Oxford University and the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. It is the first time in vaccine studies that have been conducted since April that such a serious complication has occurred in relation to a Covid 19 vaccine. It is also unclear why the inflammation of the spinal cord developed: if the disease is already had developed before. So if it could have been caused by the vaccine, or if the vaccine and the resulting immune reaction possibly accelerated the inflammation. All of this is being tested now, and that’s how long the vaccines of thousands more test subjects will have to wait.
Joachim Müller-Jung
Editor of the characteristics section, responsible for the “Nature and science” section.
The British vaccine candidate, for which the Berlin federal government contractually secured millions of doses weeks ago as a precautionary measure, has so far been considered the top favorite for the first approval of the corona vaccine. First, because the British became more quickly involved in the development of the vaccine platform and also started close cooperation with the industrial partner from the beginning.
Your vaccine targets a specific spot on the Sars-CoV-2 virus “bite” (spike) protein. The associated genetic information, which is ultimately intended to generate the desired immune reaction in the human body, is packaged in a harmless cold virus (adenovirus) in a manner similar to that of Chinese vaccines. An adenovirus that is originally found in chimpanzees. Since this explanatory agent differs greatly from human adenoviruses in molecular terms, it is hoped to avoid undesirable “cross-reactions”. After entering the body, human adenoviruses may be cleared too quickly by existing antibodies or immune cells that are still circulating in the blood of most people with previous adenovirus infections. Such cross-reactions and residual immunities can significantly reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine.
The use of the chimpanzee adenovirus envelope solves a crucial problem. But that doesn’t solve anything else, when it comes to the safety of the vaccine. And presumably it can’t be solved beforehand in clinical trials for any of the 32 candidate vaccines that have evolved in the meantime: it’s all about the possibility of the so-called antibody-dependent enhancement, abbreviated: ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement) – the slippage immune, so to speak. It is true that there is also a rare side effect. It is a reaction of the immune system that can occur practically unpredictably with some infections, but also due to the greatly reduced artificial inflammatory processes that a vaccine triggers.
