The European Union (EU) medicines regulator said today that reports of a rare neurodegenerative disease following vaccination with the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine from the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca are now being reviewed.
The Central News Agency (CNA) reported that the EU Medicines Agency said that its Safety Committee is analyzing the information received regarding cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome after vaccination with AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria vaccine.
The EU Medicines Agency requested more detailed information from AstraZeneca and said this is part of a regular review of the Vaxzevria vaccine safety report.
Reuters reports that Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the protective outer layer of nerve fibers; the cause is mostly a bacterial or viral infection with an incubation period of several days or weeks. Previously, the risk of disease was known to come from respiratory and intestinal infections and some vaccinations.
The European Medicines Agency and other government regulatory authorities have previously begun reviewing the potential for blood clots in some vaccines, including the AZ vaccine.
The UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said today that it is recommending alternative vaccinations for people under the age of 40 if possible, following concerns about a very small number of thrombotic cases with the 2019 coronavirus disease vaccine, a collaboration between AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
With the COVID-19 infection rate under control, we recommend that adults aged 18 to 39 years without potential health problems can switch to other brands of vaccine in place of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, provided that the vaccine is available without delay,” said W.S. Lam, chair of the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
The EU Medicines Agency has also reviewed reports of post-vaccination cardiac inflammation with the vaccine from the U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German biotech company BioNTech, as well as with the U.S. company Moderna. Both COVID-19 vaccines use a new messenger RNA technology to induce immunity against the virus.
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