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Astra Zeneca had to suspend trials with a corona vaccine in July after a man developed neurological symptoms, similar to current ones. This could indicate a problem with the vaccine itself.
According to experts, the Astra Zeneca company has done many things well so far. But there are doubts about the vaccine.
Reuters
A day after vaccine maker Astra Zeneca halted its crucial phase 3 studies of the effectiveness of a new Covid-19 vaccine around the world, new background information emerged. The company’s managing director, Pascal Soriot, told investors on Wednesday that the current case involves a woman in the UK. Soriot confirmed according to the report the scientific portal Statnews that the test person suffered from transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord. The patient is fine again, so she can be discharged from the hospital. In the study, the woman had received the vaccine, not the placebo used for comparison. Whether the vaccine was responsible for the disease will now be investigated during the study pause.
However, it turned out that the woman is not the first person to become ill during vaccine trials. Information from UK study participants from July and August refers to the case of a man who also had symptoms of transverse myelitis. At that time, too, the vaccinations of the subjects were stopped. However, the independent panel for the evaluation of such unexpected incidents apparently concluded that the inflammation of the man’s nerve was not related to the vaccine, but to a previously undiscovered multiple sclerosis, a neurological disease also caused by a malady. functioning of the immune system.
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The new information on this first case does not change the fact that temporary pauses in large efficacy studies are normal processes. Several experts had the same British and the German Science Media Center were unanimously confirmed Wednesday, and Astra Zeneca’s approach was expressly praised. However, experts are still not entirely in agreement on whether the vaccine developed at Oxford University does not have the potential to trigger transverse myelitis-like neurological diseases.
After all, it is a vaccine that not only has characteristics of the new Coronavirus but also a so-called vector virus, namely a chimpanzee adenovirus, called ChAdOx1. It has not yet been included in any approved vaccine. The monkey virus is not capable of multiplying, but theoretically it can also trigger an immune reaction. Infection physician Clemens Wendtner from Munich Clinic Schwabing believes that it is possible that the monkey virus may also trigger a nonspecific immune response against the body’s own structures. “An overreaction of the body to the crown protein is also conceivable,” says Wendtner.
Initial tests of the ChAdOx1 vaccine have shown that the amount of antibodies formed against the coronavirus is several times higher than the level of those with Covid-19. “The immune reaction could be too strong and attack other healthy tissues, such as nerve tissue, and trigger an inflammation of the spinal cord,” says Wendtner. Molecular and other biological tests should now investigate, explains the Covid 19 expert. “If a causal connection to the vaccine is confirmed, it would be a major setback, not only for this specific vaccine, but also for other vector-based vaccines. of adenovirus “.
