A study from the prestigious Yale University School of Medicine has described the chronic symptoms that developed and persisted for some individuals soon after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine as a previously-unrecognised condition they named post-vaccination syndrome (PVS).
The new study, a preprint (which means it has not yet been peer-reviewed) says the symptoms include excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog, insomnia, palpitations, tinnitus, dizziness, muscle pain, exercise intolerance, and biological changes to immune systems.
The researchers also found that those with post-vaccination syndrome had higher levels of Covid-19 spike protein (which is used by vaccines to trigger immune responses) circulating ion their bloods compared to the controls (those without PVS) – even when there was no evidence of Covid-19 .
Some participants with PVS had detectable levels more than 700 days after their last vaccination, and persistent spike protein has been associated with long COVID as well.
Lead researcher and an immunologist at Yale University, Dr Akiko Iwasaki, told the New York Times that “something else is allowing this sort of late-phase expression of spike protein, and we don’t really know what that is”.
And she also told Yale News: ‘That was surprising, to find spike protein in circulation at such a late time point.”
PVS also appears to reawaken a dormant virus in the body called Epstein-Barr which can cause flu-like symptoms, swollen lymph nodes and nerve issues, the research suggested. In the study, individuals with PVS were more likely than those without the syndrome to have evidence of reactivated Epstein-Barr virus which is the most common cause of infectious mononucleosis, also known as “mono”, Yale News said.
The small study collected blood samples between December 2022 and November 2023 from 42 people with PVS (29 females and 13 males) and 22 healthy people without it (11 females and 11 males) for the research.
The summary of the study acknowledged “Covid-19 vaccines have prevented millions of Covid-19 deaths” but that a “small fraction of the population” have reported suffering from the condition PVS.
Yale researchers said they had taken initial steps to characterize this condition, uncovering potential immunological patterns that differentiate those with PVS from others. The findings are early and require further confirmation but may eventually guide strategies to help affected individuals, they said.
The PVS symptoms develop shortly after vaccination, within a day or two, can become more severe in the days that follow, and persist over time, Yale News reported – adding that more studies are needed to understand the prevalence of PVS.
“It’s clear that some individuals are experiencing significant challenges after vaccination. Our responsibility as scientists and clinicians is to listen to their experiences, rigorously investigate the underlying causes, and seek ways to help,” said Harlan Krumholz, the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at YSM and co-senior author of the study.
“This work is still in its early stages, and we need to validate these findings,” said Akiko Iwasaki, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and co-senior author of the study. “But this is giving us some hope that there may be something that we can use for diagnosis and treatment of PVS down the road.”
Dr Iwasaki said that people with PVS had felt ignored because the syndrome is not recognised by the authorities.
“People with PVS have felt dismissed and ignored because PVS is not a medically recognised condition,” she told the the New York Times.
“I believe that rigorous scientific research will lead to better diagnosis, treatment and prevention of PVS. Such research will also lead to better transparency and safer vaccines.”
She also said that she wanted “to emphasise that this is still a work in progress”.
“It’s not as if this study determined what’s making people sick,” Medical Brief reported, adding “but it’s the first kind of glimpse at what may be going on within these people.”
The latest study is small, and the condition it is studying is “very heterogeneous”, said Dr Gregory Poland, emeritus editor of the peer-reviewed journal Vaccine and president of Atria Research Institute.
“Despite these limitations, they found interesting data that need further study,” he said. “Much larger studies of very carefully defined and phenotyped individuals need to take place,” Poland told MedPage Today.
“My clinical impression is that post-vaccination syndrome is real,” he observed. “Collectively, my impression is that this adds to the growing body of literature and clinical experience suggesting that in rare cases, mRNA-based COVID vaccines can induce immune, autoimmune, viral reactivation, and other perturbations in susceptible individuals.”
“But these investigators are approaching it correctly and pointing the way,” he noted. “After confirming these results, the next steps are to reverse-engineer vaccines to prevent this and to develop therapeutic approaches to reverse what has happened to these patients.”
Dr Poland, a leading vaccine expert, and founder and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, previously revealed that he was stricken with tinnitus after he received his Covid vaccines in 2021, and was critical of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who said that their review “did not find any data suggesting a link between Covid-19 vaccines and tinnitus”.
“The CDC has not, however, made those reviews public, as it did after looking into other possible vaccine side effects, such as inflammation of the heart or myocarditis”, NBC reported in 2023.
“Why has the CDC not done all of the research that they should do on this and published it?” Dr Poland said at the time.
In his case, the noise sounds like a constant, shrill whistle. The din has not improved, and it continues to affect his sleep and quality of life.
“There are some days where I’m busy or haven’t been exposed too much in the way of noise, where it’s tolerable. Other days, I could just scream,” he said.
After speaking publicly about his experience, Dr Poland told NBC News that he then received emails from strangers “almost daily” who say they experience the same constant noises and believe it was triggered by the Covid vaccines. “You don’t ever get over tinnitus,” he said.
The vaccine expert believes the virus’s spike protein may play a role: “After mRNA vaccines, there is some level of spike protein that circulates,” Poland said at the time. “Could it be much like the spike protein in the heart that leads to myocarditis? Could the same thing happen in the inner ear?”