Opinion: If Covid-19 vaccines can cause heart inflammation, caution should be warranted in those at risk
The remarkable development and rollout of Covid-19 vaccines will be hailed as a triumph of science. The rapidity of the process, though, opens the door to questions about side effects that could not have been detected in their clinical trials.
So far, unusual blood clots have been associated with administration of the AstraZeneca/Oxford and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, predominantly in younger women. More recently, reports have emerged that pericarditis (inflammation of the lining around the heart) and myocarditis (inflammation of the heart itself) have occurred, mainly in young men receiving mRNA-based vaccines. In this essay, we focus on myocarditis because, typically, it is a more serious condition than pericarditis (though severe cases of pericarditis can also be devastating).
