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| - Last Updated on May 19, 2022 by Team THIP
Quick Take
A media website wrote an article to claim that U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found covid vaccines increase the risk of autoimmune myocarditis by 13,200%. We fact-checked and found the claim to be False.
The Claim
On May 1, 2022, a media website named DailyExpose published an article titled, “CDC Study finds Covid-19 Vaccination increases risk of suffering Autoimmune Disease Myocarditis by 13,200%”. The article based its facts on another JAMANetwork research titled, “Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021” reviewed by CDC researchers.
Fact Check
Do covid vaccines increase the risk of autoimmune myocarditis?
It does not seem so. The JAMANetwork research only talks about myocarditis, not autoimmune myocarditis. This research has concluded that “Based on passive surveillance reporting in the US, the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men”. We could not find any reference to autoimmune myocarditis within the research paper.
Myocarditis is a medical condition that causes inflammation of the heart muscle. This inflammation can affect the ability of the heart to pump blood and cause irregular heartbeat. Myocarditis is commonly caused by viruses, bacteria, fungus and parasites. However, some autoimmune diseases such as lupus or sarcoidosis can cause myocarditis because the immune system attacks the healthy cells. Also, drugs and environmental or toxic exposure can cause myocarditis.
Besides this, the research paper itself claims, “Among 192,405,448 persons receiving a total of 354,100,845 mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines during the study period, there were 1991 reports of myocarditis to VAERS and 1626 of these reports met the case definition of myocarditis.”
The CDC website has also shown that the risk of heart complications is more after covid infection than covid vaccines. Conclusively, the available evidence suggests that “the benefits of covid vaccines outweigh the known and potential risks”. The research itself recommends the risk of myocarditis ‘should be considered in the context of the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination’.
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