Results from largest study into COVID vaccine side effects released

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The results are in from the world's largest study into the side effects of COVID vaccines. The study involved almost 100 million people from across 8 countries.

Transcript

00:00 99 million people, 183 million doses of vaccines, looking at Astra, Moderna and Pfizer. And

00:10 they've done it in eight countries with very reliable data, places like Australia, New

00:14 Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Finland. And the results show that, well, first of all, they

00:21 uncovered side effects that they hadn't quite expected, and they did show up as a signal

00:28 there. All the side effects were rare. And it takes me a little bit just to explain the

00:36 data, because what they were doing was they were saying, look, what's the base rate of

00:41 these problems in the community? And what's the rise above the base rate? How many cases

00:46 would be expected over this period of time in this group of people? And then how many

00:51 cases appeared? And what they showed was that they were rare. So let's start. And they only

01:00 chose significant side effects if they were confident that they were side effects. So

01:05 Guillain-Barre syndrome is one that's been talked about a lot. You and I have talked

01:08 about it on the virus on the news channel. And so this is an ascending paralysis of the

01:14 body, a bit like-- well, it's not really like multiple sclerosis, but it affects the nervous

01:22 system. Usually, in most people, it's a temporary phenomenon, although it can be quite serious

01:27 at the time. Guillain-Barre seemed to be only a problem with the Astra vaccine. Rare, but

01:33 only with the Astra vaccine, not with the mRNA vaccines. Myocarditis, pericarditis,

01:39 inflammation of the heart, that showed up as a significant side effect. And no surprises

01:44 there with the mRNA vaccines. Then there was a side effect called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.

01:52 So this is essentially a brain inflammation, usually seen in children, but in this case,

01:58 in older people. These are largely 20 to 60-year-olds. And again, in most people, self-limiting,

02:06 but acute can be quite nasty. But to give you an idea of how-- and it was only with

02:10 the Moderna vaccine. They didn't see it with Pfizer, and they didn't see it with Astra.

02:14 So out of 10 million doses of Astra, 1 million-- well, I think 10 million doses of Moderna,

02:22 I should say, they expected to see two cases in that population of this brain inflammation,

02:30 and they saw seven. So you can see how rare it is, but it needs more investigation.

02:37 So out of that cohort of 99 million participants who were the subject of this study, how many

02:42 people came up with side effects? I've been asked this question before in terms

02:52 of how many people. If you just take the brain inflammation, out of 99 million people, seven.

02:59 Because this was-- I mean, the whole-- So it's not a lot of people.

03:01 Yeah. But the thing about side effects is that a lot of people around the world were

03:04 wondering, what if I'm one of the seven, right? But proportionality is really, really

03:08 important here. That's right. So it's vanishingly rare, but

03:12 it does exist. And it's all about transparency so that you know what the risks are. And this

03:19 would be like winning the biggest lotto three times in your life, something like that.

03:27 As we mentioned, this was-- eight countries was the scope. How much can that be extrapolated

03:33 to the rest of the world population, other recipients of these vaccines?

03:36 It's a good question because you might well get different genetic susceptibilities in

03:40 different populations. But in terms of a representative population for Australia, particularly Canada

03:50 was heavily involved. It's a very similar population to Australia's. I think Australians

03:54 can take it away that, from their point of view, it gives a good understanding of the

03:58 risk of side effects. I want to turn now to another study, this

04:01 time into a type of blood fat that's been linked with heart disease and strokes. Tell

04:07 me about that. We all know about cholesterol. And if you've

04:11 thought about cholesterol, you've heard about there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

04:16 Bad cholesterol is called LDL. And that's the one that they target to reduce the risk

04:22 of heart attack and stroke and so on. It's been known for a long time that on the side

04:26 here, there's another blood fat. It's not part of cholesterol. It's a separate blood

04:30 fat. And it goes by the name lipoprotein little a, 'cause there's a little a next to it, the

04:36 way the experts describe it. And it's been known for a while that LP little a increases

04:43 the risk of heart attack and stroke. But cardiologists have been trying to find all sorts of reasons

04:48 why they shouldn't measure it. One of the reasons is that they haven't got effective

04:51 treatments for it. It turns out, and it's just getting stronger and stronger and stronger,

04:56 that LP little a is a strong risk factor for heart attacks and strokes in its own right.

05:01 And it should be measured in people who are at high risk. 'Cause there are ways of bringing

05:06 it down and reducing your risk. And there are new treatments on the horizon. And it's

05:10 as potent in terms of heart attack and stroke as LDL cholesterol.

05:14 How do you get about working out if you are at high risk or not?

05:18 You get a simple blood test. It's that easy?

05:20 Yeah, it's that easy. The trouble is it's not reimbursed at the moment. So it'll cost

05:23 you anywhere between 25 and 50 bucks.

05:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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