No Credible Evidence COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines ‘Dramatically Increase’ Heart Attack Risk, Contrary to Flawed Abstract
SciCheck Digest
The COVID-19 vaccines administered in the U.S. are not known to increase the risk of heart attack. But social media posts are misinterpreting an abstract in an American Heart Association journal as proof that the vaccine kills. The publisher later issued an “expression of concern” about the abstract “until a suitable correction can be published.”
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Hundreds of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered in the U.S. None of the vaccines authorized or approved for use in the U.S. are known to increase the risk of heart attack in any population.
Rare cases of heart inflammation have been reported, primarily in young men, after receipt of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. But studies have shown the risk is very low and most people recover quickly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the potential risks of heart inflammation.
COVID-19, on the other hand, is known to be able to cause heart damage. Some research also suggests that the disease raises the risk of a heart attack and other related cardiovascular events.
A study published in the Lancet, for example, which included nearly 90,000 COVID-19 patients in Sweden and compared them with similar patients who did not have the disease, found that having COVID-19 was associated with more than triple the risk of having a first-time heart attack in the first two weeks after falling ill. The study also identified COVID-19 as a possible risk factor for ischemic stroke.
Yet, several online and social media posts claim mRNA COVID-19 vaccines “dramatically increase” heart attack risk, based on a misrepresented abstract published in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation on Nov. 8.
The abstract, which by nature is a brief summary and as a poster at AHA’s Scientific Sessions online program on Nov. 13. None of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to thrombosis.
