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A source familiar with the event, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in an interview Tuesday that the affected volunteer had experienced symptoms consistent with a condition called transverse myelitis, or inflammation of the spinal cord.
In a statement to reporters Wednesday, an AstraZeneca spokesperson, Michele Meixell, said the individual did not have a confirmed case of transverse myelitis. He said that the CEO of the company, Pascal Soriot, had stated in a telephone call reported by STAT “that there is no definitive diagnosis and that there will not be until more tests are carried out. These tests will be delivered to an independent safety committee that will review the event and establish a final diagnosis. “
The company did not respond to a request for clarification on whether transverse myelitis was suspected.
Transverse myelitis is relatively rare, causing symptoms in about 1,400 people each year in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health. The condition can lead to pain, muscle weakness, paralysis, or bladder problems. Its root cause is often mysterious, although doctors believe the syndrome usually occurs when inflammatory responses in the body fail, sometimes as a reaction to a past or ongoing infection, said Dr. Felicia Chow, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco. . “It’s not unusual that we never find out the cause,” she said.
There has been some past speculation that vaccines could trigger transverse myelitis, he added. A handful of vaccines have previously been linked to a number of other autoimmune disorders, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which the immune system attacks the nerves. However, these complications are rare.
Both transverse myelitis and Guillain-Barré syndrome have been flagged as possible complications of Covid-19.
Although vaccines are designed to be harmless to humans, they must still awaken the body’s defenses to generate a protective immune response. But if the wrong subsets of cells or molecules are put into action, or if the body can’t control its own responses, this could trigger a cascade that begins to damage healthy tissues, said Dr. Serena Spudich, a neurologist at the University of Yale.
