Urinary symptoms of incontinence, urinary tract diseases, urinating hesitancy, and frequent urination have all been reported.
COVID-19 infections and vaccines for it have been linked to urinary and prostatic complications.
A recent Hong Kong study found that among men who were being treated for baseline lower urinary tract symptoms, those who have had a COVID-19 infection were at a greater risk of having an enlarged prostate, which can lead to a greater chance of urinary tract infections, urine retention, and hematuria (urinating blood).
“Male patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 are more likely to have deterioration of LUTS (lower urinary tract symptoms). This association is not without biological plausibility,” the authors concluded.
Receptors for SARS-CoV-2 and its superficial spike protein are abundant in the prostate, this therefore “renders it a target for SARS-CoV-2, leading to inflammation and therefore these outcomes of interest,” the authors added.
Urinary Complications After COVID or Vaccination
Urinary symptoms of incontinence, urinary tract diseases, urinating hesitancy, and frequent urination have all been reported either after COVID infections or after inoculation with its vaccines.
Since the urethra passes through the prostate, enlarged prostates can impede the flow of urine, causing urinary hesitation, infections, and retention.
In the Hong Kong study, the authors reasoned that the urinary complications caused by an enlarged prostate are due to the virus causing inflammation in the genito-urological area. They explain that the SARS-CoV-2 viruses may be binding to ACE-2 and TMPRSS2 receptors in the testes and prostate, causing damage. The relatively high expression levels of ACE-2 in male and female reproductive organs suggest that these organs are potentially vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
However, some doctors think that the persistent spike proteins from the vaccine may also be driving the damage. Biodistribution studies of the vaccine have shown that the mRNA vaccines may segregate in the ovaries and testes, with other studies showing that the spike proteins may persist for many months to years.
A common complication is the worsening of lower urinary tract symptoms among patients who already have an underlying problem. Urinary proteins involved in immune response have been shown to change before and after COVID-19 vaccination.
Urinary incontinence is another common side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine. Psychiatrist Dr. Amanda McDonald, who has treated several hundred patients for COVID and post-vaccine symptoms, told The Epoch Times that incontinence is quite common among her vaccinated patients.
“I have had some twenty-something-year-old women with incontinence and they’re just being told that this is normal,” Dr. McDonald said, “I have had six, seven women in a row coming in telling me the same story and saying my primary physician sent me here to talk to my psychiatrist because they think it’s all in my head.”
Dr. McDonald has mainly prescribed ivermectin as treatment for her patients, since ivermectin can bind to and block spike proteins.
Incontinence tends to be more common in females than males. Other studies investigating urinary symptoms post-vaccination have similarly reported more females reporting side effects than males.
Internal medicine physician Dr. Keith Berkowitz, who has been treating long COVID and post-vaccine patients, believes that the urinary incontinence may be due to urinary tract infections caused by a suppressed immune system.
He has been measuring his patients for their immune cell levels and found that some patients who have prior infections or inoculations have abnormally low immune cell counts. Since he did not test their immune levels prior to vaccination or infection, it is unknown if the immunosuppression state is caused by the vaccine or the infection, nevertheless, a link persists.
Elevated PSA Level After COVID and Vaccination
Studies have linked both SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccinations with a slight increase in prostate serum antigen (PSA), with the third anti-COVID vaccine dose having a more prominent impact. The clinical significance is not known yet, but some health providers like Scott Marsland from the Leading Edge Clinic suspect that it may be an indicator for prostate cancer.
A man’s PSA level is often measured through a blood test to screen for prostate cancer.
High PSA levels can be a warning signal for prostate cancer, but there are cancer-free men with high PSA levels, just as there are men with prostate cancer and normal PSA levels.
Mr. Marsland said that several of his patients who were in remission for many years had developed new-onset prostate cancer following vaccination. This has not occurred for his unvaccinated but infected patients.
He also mentioned that patients who have enlarged prostate often have urinary urgency, get up multiple times at night, and have some degree of incontinence. “this can be at a really young [age], and it was not something that they had an issue with before they had COVID or before they got vaccinated.”
According to Elizabeth Arias, a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the U.S. life expectancy. “[It will take] some time before we’re back where we were in 2019,” she said.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that according to CDC numbers, life expectancy for the entire U.S. was 77 years in 2020. However, this dropped to 76.4 years by 2021 – in time for the introduction of the COVID-19 injections that year.
One study by the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California found that heart attack deaths climbed for all age groups during 2020 and 2021. But the biggest jump in heart attack deaths was seen in the group aged 25 to 44 at 29 percent.
COVID-19 injections shorten men’s lives by 24 years
The CDC’s own data also disclosed the true dangers of the vaccines. According to the Daily Expose, men injected with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could see as much as 24 years taken off their lifespan as a result.
The public health agency’s all-cause mortality data shows that each dose of the COVID-19 vaccine a person got raised their mortality rate by seven percent in 2022, compared to 2021. In other words, people injected with five doses were 35 percent more likely to die in 2022 than in 2021.
The Expose compared the COVID-19 vaccines to “slow-acting genetic poison” based on this data, given the fact that people do not appear to be recovering from the damage caused by earlier vaccines when it comes to excess mortality. It ultimately warned that a person injected with five doses would be 350 percent more likely to pass away in 2031, and a shocking 700 percent more likely to die in 2041 than an unvaccinated person.
Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), acknowledged this reduced life expectancy. “We are facing extraordinary headwinds in our public health with a major decline in life expectancy,” he wrote on X. “The major decline [of life expectancy] in the U.S. is not just a trend; I’d describe it as catastrophic.”
Not surprisingly, Califf stopped short of pinning the blame on the COVID-19 vaccines. Many of those who dare to suggest that the injections are responsible for excess deaths find themselves being censored.
In one instance, whistleblower Barry Young from New Zealand shared data from the country’s health agency that pointed to a strong link between the COVID-19 injections and excess mortality. According to the data he shared, the vaccines killed more than 10 million around the world.
But this revelation came with a steep price, as Young was arrested and now faces prison time. Nevertheless, the whistleblower said he shared the data as it blew his mind. He also wanted experts to analyze it and make people aware of what is happening.
Apart from potentially preventing a particular disease, vaccines may cause persistent nonspecific effects that can affect a person’s lifetime survival.
In a review published on Dec. 26 in Vaccine, researchers found that non-live vaccines like influenza, COVID-19, hepatitis B, and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTaP) tend to cause adverse nonspecific effects (NSE), increasing a person’s risks of all-cause mortality and the potential risk of infections from diseases they are meant to protect against.
A live vaccine contains a weakened form of the pathogen, which is less virulent but capable of replicating in the body, thus mimicking the actual disease progression. Non-live vaccines use inactivated viruses, fragments, or genes of the pathogen to trigger an immune response without pathogen replication.
Live vaccines elicit a much stronger immune defense, typically requiring only one shot, while non-live vaccines result in a weaker response, often necessitating multiple shots.
So far, research has identified several non-live vaccines that cause adverse nonspecific effects, namely DTaP and Tdap, influenza H1N1, malaria, hepatitis B, inactivated polio, and COVID mRNA vaccines.
The Vaccine study singled out DTaP, influenza, malaria, hepatitis B, and COVID mRNA vaccines.
On the other hand, live vaccines such as the oral live polio vaccine (OPV), the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine for tuberculosis, and the smallpox vaccines all have beneficial nonspecific effects, according to the study.
“Live vaccines … elicit epigenetic alterations that train the innate immune system and increase immunity to unrelated infections. In opposition, non‐live vaccines may promote ‘tolerance’ that increases susceptibility to unrelated illnesses,” the authors suggested.
The study was primarily based on decades of work from Danish researchers Dr. Christine Stabell Benn and professor Peter Aaby.
“Our work is a tribute to their great scientific work that has not been recognized,” biologist Alberto Rubio-Casillas, one of the study’s authors, told The Epoch Times.
Non-Live Vaccines Are Like an ‘Ill-Prepared’ Army
“Historically, we’ve thought about the innate immune system as the first line of defense,” Dr. Benn told The Epoch Times.
It was thought that innate immunity could not store memory. To use war as an analogy, the immune system’s “army” could not learn from previous battles with pathogens. Adaptive immunity, on the other hand, could learn and be trained, forming antibodies to fight against the infection.
Therefore, for a long time, vaccines were evaluated based on their effects on the adaptive immune system, and antibodies were measured following vaccination.
But researchers in the Netherlands have since shown that the innate immune system can be trained. After vaccinating people with the BCG vaccines and harvesting some of the patients’ innate immune cells, researchers found that after vaccination, the innate cells exhibited a more robust immune response and demonstrated improved clearance of tuberculosis, as well as other bacteria and fungi when compared to patients’ prevaccination status.
Thus, the innate immune system actually does learn something from its previous battles. This is called trained innate immunity.
Live vaccines, which mimic an actual disease, enhance the effectiveness of the innate immune system in defending against infections. Non-live vaccines, on the other hand, weaken the immune system’s ability to fend off infections.
In a TED talk, Dr. Benn compared infections to a competitive tennis match and live vaccines to a tennis coach. The tennis coach may change tactics and strategies, training the body to have “a wide variety of tricks” against the pathogen. Non-live vaccines, however, are like tennis ball machines that shoot out balls at a specific speed and spot. If a person only trains with a tennis ball machine, he or she will be less prepared for an actual match.
“So you may be ill-prepared and even worse off when a real opponent enters the court, and the balls start coming and hitting elsewhere than what you trained for,” Dr. Benn said.
Nonspecific Effects
Some vaccines result in positive nonspecific effects, but others may result in overall adverse nonspecific effects. The order in which vaccines are administered also factors in.
While non-live vaccines cause negative NSEs, administering a live vaccine after a non-live one neutralizes negative NSEs, Dr. Benn said.
This has been shown in studies evaluating the safety of measles vaccines, which are often given around the same time as DTP, a non-live vaccine. Studies have found that if the measles vaccine are given after the DTP vaccine, there is an overall positive effect, whereas if this order is reversed, then there is a negative effect.
“It seems that effects are strongest as long as the vaccine is the most recent vaccine,” said Dr. Benn.
Dr. Benn added that the BCG vaccine has long-term beneficial nonspecific effects “in spite of other vaccines being given afterwards.”
The DTaP vaccine has arguably the most evidence of adverse nonspecific effects. Girls who took the DTaP vaccine had a 50 percent higher risk of dying than boys who got it. Compared to girls who were DTaP-unvaccinated, vaccinated girls’ risk of dying was over 2.5 times higher.
Dr. Benn’s studies have generally shown that girls are at a greater risk of developing adverse nonspecific effects after being administered non-live vaccines.
Live Vaccines Replaced With Non-Live Vaccines
Non-live vaccines are increasingly replacing live vaccines. For example, live oral polio vaccines are no longer available on the U.S. market, and a non-live version is administered instead.
This substitution of live vaccines with non-live can pose potential health risks to the general immunity of the population, as the immune systems become less trained and potentially “lazy,” said Dr. Benn.
However, the main reason non-live vaccines are preferred over live vaccines is that they are believed to be safer for people with depleted immune systems.
Since a live vaccine causes mild disease in the body, people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome can develop a disease from the injection and may die since their bodies are unable to clear infections. Conversely, non-live vaccines comprise only disease components, so they cannot induce disease.
In this aspect, Dr. Benn said that the “risk of getting the real disease with the live vaccines has been seen as a bigger threat than I think it deserves.”
Research suggests that people with weaker immune constitutions due to age or chronic disease may sometimes benefit from having their immune systems trained using live vaccines.
In one study involving hospitalized older patients randomized to get the BCG vaccine or a placebo, the incidence of disease among those who took the BCG vaccine was about half the incidence of disease in the placebo group.
Health Authorities Still Skeptical
Despite the evidence suggesting the potential superiority of live vaccines, Dr. Benn’s research has been largely unacknowledged by the mainstays of academia.
“In my interpretation, whereas most researchers now acknowledge nonspecific effects, the major health organizations are reluctant to accept our findings because [the findings] imply the possibility that some vaccines may sometimes be harmful. So it is easier just to dismiss the whole thing,” she said.
“The vaccine skeptics, on the other side, may find that our observations on non-live vaccines confirm their worst fears—vaccines can be harmful—but they may be more reluctant to accept the beneficial effects. And their focus on the negative effects may make the vaccine supporters take an even more rigid stance.”
Immunologists now largely agree that some vaccines cause nonspecific effects, but how these effects should be quantified remains controversial.
This is because the nonspecific effects of vaccines are dependent on context, whereas a vaccine’s specific effects are generally considered context-independent. For example, females may make more antibodies than males and younger people more than older, but most people still get some form of immunity.
“In contrast, because the nonspecific effects act on the broader innate and general immune system, they are dependent on other factors going on in the immune system … like other health interventions that can alter and modify the nonspecific effects,” Dr. Benn explained. Not everybody will have the same benefit, she added.
Additionally, pharmaceutical companies may be more reluctant to produce live vaccines because they are harder to culture and manufacture.
“If you have ever tried to bake with sourdough, it’s a little bit like live vaccines; they are very dependent on the temperature of the room, the water used to culture it, and so on,” said Dr. Benn.
“But basically, all the live vaccines I’m talking about—they have no patents anymore, they’re super cheap to produce, and it’s some of the cheapest vaccines we have to make.”
Vaccine Safety: NSEs Versus Adverse Events
Though live vaccines tend to cause positive NSEs, that is not to say they cannot potentially cause adverse events. NSEs are considered a separate entity from adverse events, Dr. Benn explained. According to her, in rare cases, live vaccines may induce the actual disease in some recipients, such as people born with gross defects in their immune systems or who have severe immunodeficiencies, like fulminant AIDS.
In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, live vaccines were likely not considered due to concerns about the formation of recombinant viruses when a vaccinated person comes into contact with the circulating viral strain.
However, despite their potential beneficial NSEs, the COVID vaccines may still be associated with adverse events due to the presence of highly toxic spike proteins, which studies now link to long COVID and vaccine injuries.
In the medical textbook “The Immune Response,” the authors wrote that, in isolated cases, live viral strains administered to individuals can regain virulence, causing disease in recipients. Additionally, there is a risk of contamination with other viral strains during manufacturing.
While COVID has now claimed more than 1 million lives in the United States alone, these aren’t the only fatalities caused at least in part by the virus. A small but growing number of Americans are surviving acute infections only to succumb months later to the lingering health problems caused by long COVID.
Much of the attention on long COVID has centered on the sometimes debilitating symptoms that strike people with the condition, with no formal diagnostic tests or standard treatments available, and the effect it has on quality of life. But new figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that long COVID can also be deadly.
More than 5000 Americans have died from long COVID since the start of the pandemic, according to new estimates from the CDC.
This total, based on death certificate data collected by the CDC, includes a preliminary tally of 1491 long COVID deaths in 2023 in addition to 3544 fatalities previously reported from January 2020 through June 2022.
Guidance issued in 2023 on how to formally report long COVID as a cause of death on death certificates should help get a more accurate count of these fatalities going forward, said Robert Anderson, PhD, chief mortality statistician for the CDC.
“We hope that the guidance will help cause of death certifiers be more aware of the impact of long COVID and more likely to report long COVID as a cause of death when appropriate,” Anderson said. “That said, we do not expect that this guidance will have a dramatic impact on the trend.”
There’s no standard definition or diagnostic test for long COVID. It’s typically diagnosed when people have symptoms at least 3 months after an acute infection that weren’t present before they got sick. As of the end of last year, about 7% of American adults had experienced long COVID at some point, the CDC estimated in September 2023.
The new death tally indicates long COVID remains a significant public health threat and is likely to grow in the years ahead, even though the pandemic may no longer be considered a global health crisis, experts said.
For example, the death certificate figures indicate:
COVID-19 was the third leading cause of American deaths in 2020 and 2021, and the fourth leading cause of death in the United States in 2023.
Nearly 1% of the more than one million deaths related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic have been attributed to long COVID, according to data released by the CDC.
The proportion of COVID-related deaths from long COVID peaked in June 2021 at 1.2% and again in April 2022 at 3.8%, according to the CDC. Both of these peaks coincided with periods of declining fatalities from acute infections.
“I do expect that deaths associated with long COVID will make up an increasingly larger proportion of total deaths associated with COVID-19,” said Mark Czeisler, PhD, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who has studied long COVID fatalities.
Months and even years after an acute infection, long COVID can contribute to serious and potentially life-threatening conditions that impact nearly every major system in the body, according to the CDC guidelines for identifying the condition on death certificates.
This means long COVID may often be listed as an underlying cause of death when people with this condition die of issues related to their heart, lungs, brain or kidneys, the CDC guidelines noted.
The risk for long COVID fatalities remains elevated for at least 6 months for people with milder acute infections and for at least 2 years in severe cases that require hospitalization, some previous research suggested.
As happens with other acute infections, certain people are more at risk for fatal case of long COVID. Age, race, and ethnicity have all been cited as risk factors by researchers who have been tracking the condition since the start of the pandemic.
Half of long COVID fatalities from July 2021 to June 2022 occurred in people aged 65 years and older, and another 23% were recorded among people aged 50-64 years old, according a report from CDC.
Long COVID death rates also varied by race and ethnicity, from a high of 14.1 cases per million among America Indian and Alaskan natives to a low of 1.5 cases per million among Asian people, the CDC found. Death rates per million were 6.7 for White individuals, 6.4 for Black people, and 4.7 for Hispanic people.
The disproportionate share of Black and Hispanic people who developed and died from severe acute infections may have left fewer survivors to develop long COVID, limiting long COVID fatalities among these groups, the CDC report concluded.
It’s also possible that long COVID fatalities were undercounted in these populations because they faced challenges accessing healthcare or seeing providers who could recognize the hallmark symptoms of long COVID.
It’s also difficult to distinguish between how many deaths related to the virus ultimately occur as a result of long COVID rather than acute infections. That’s because it may depend on a variety of factors, including how consistently medical examiners follow the CDC guidelines, said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, chief of research at the Veterans Affairs, St. Louis Health Care System and a senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Long COVID remains massively underdiagnosed, and death in people with long COVID is misattributed to other things,” Al-Aly said.
An accurate test for long COVID could help lead to a more accurate count of these fatalities, Czeisler said. Some preliminary research suggests that it might one day be possible to diagnose long COVID with a blood test.
“The timeline for such a test and the extent to which it would be widely applied is uncertain,” Czeisler noted, “though that would certainly be a gamechanger.”
Two-dose Shingrix vaccine also provided long-term protection in people taking corticosteroids
The two-dose recombinant zoster vaccine (RZV; Shingrix) remained highly effective at preventing shingles over a 4-year period in real-world settings, according to a prospective cohort study.
Over 4 years, the two-dose regimen was 76% effective (95% CI 75-78), with one dose of the vaccine just 64% effective over the same time period (95% CI 62-67), underscoring the need for people to get both doses, Nicola P. Klein, MD, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, and colleagues reported in the Annals of Internal Medicineopens in a new tab or window.
“The study findings are reassuring in confirming that the recombinant zoster vaccine is highly effective for at least 4 years,” Klein told MedPage Today in an email. “The study also reaffirms the importance of getting the second dose of vaccine to maximize protection against shingles, which can be a painful and potentially dangerous condition.”
Klein noted that vaccine effectiveness was the same in patients who received the second vaccine dose later than the recommended interval of 2 to 6 months between doses. “One of the main messages is that everyone for whom the vaccine is recommendedopens in a new tab or window should get two doses, but not to panic if the second dose ended up being delayed beyond 6 months.”
The study included about 2 million people over the age of 50 who had never received RZV. During the study period from 2018 through 2022, 38% received at least one vaccine dose and 29% received two doses of RZV. After both doses, vaccine effectiveness was 79% during the first year, 75% during the second year, and 73% during the third and fourth years.
Although vaccine effectiveness after one dose was 70% effective during the first year, effectiveness waned substantially after that to 45% during the second year, 48% during the third year, and 52% after the third year.
Effectiveness also varied by age. The vaccine was slightly more effective in people who were vaccinated when they were younger than 65 years of age (81%) versus those who were older (74%).
Notably, in people who received corticosteroids — a group at significantly higher risk for shingles — the vaccine exhibited lower but substantial effectiveness (65%). The authors pointed out the number of shingles cases per 100 recipients prevented by the vaccine was about the same in corticosteroid users and nonusers.
“Our analysis can give clinicians additional support for urging adults in the recommended categories — over age 50 or immunocompromised — to get vaccinated against herpes zoster,” Klein said.
The study’s estimates of vaccine effectiveness were lower than those observed in the ZOE-50opens in a new tab or window and the ZOE-70opens in a new tab or window clinical trials, the authors noted. ZOE-50 found that the vaccine was 97% effective in people ages 50 and older and ZOE-70 found that the vaccine was 90% effective in those 70 years of age or older. A long-term follow-up study of those trials concluded that vaccine effectiveness held steady for at least 7 years, but long-term effectiveness of the vaccine in real-world settings hasn’t been extensively evaluated, the authors said.
The prospective cohort study gathered data from patients in four healthcare systems within the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a collaboration between the CDC and nine integrated healthcare systems. RZV was offered free of charge to most eligible patients. Researchers excluded those who received a diagnosis of shingles in the year before the study began. Among participants, 38% were 65 years of age or older, 53% were female, and 59% were white. The outcome was incident herpes zoster infection.
During the study follow-up over 45,000 cases of shingles were diagnosed and most (94%) were in unvaccinated participants. Unadjusted incidence of herpes zoster was 1.7 per 1,000 person-years in fully vaccinated people versus 6.7 per 1,000 person-years in unvaccinated people.
One of the potential limitations of the study was that a diagnosis of shingles required both a herpes zoster diagnosis ICD code and an antiviral prescription, rather than PCR testing. This may have lowered vaccine effectiveness estimates, researchers wrote. Also, patients with milder illness may have not sought care, potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness.
Researchers found several immune and hormonal differences between people with Long COVID and those without.
The findings shed light on possible causes of Long COVID and could eventually lead to more sensitive testing and personalized treatments.
Researchers are making progress in understanding the underlying causes of Long COVID. ShowRecMedia / Shutterstock
Some people may experience chronic symptoms for months or years after an acute viral infection. Long COVID, a syndrome that develops in some people after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, is a prominent recent example. More than 200 Long COVID symptoms have been documented. Typical ones include extreme fatigue, cognitive impairment, post-exertional malaise, and respiratory problems. Research suggests that about one in eight people who survive an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection go on to have persistent symptoms. The processes that give rise to Long COVID remain unclear.
To shed light on the biology underlying Long COVID, a research team with NIH funding, partly through the RECOVER(link is external) Initiative, conducted a study of more than 250 people. The participants included people who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and uninfected people. Among those who had been infected, some had Long COVID and some did not. The researchers measured levels of various immune cells and markers in the participants’ blood. They also measured antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 and a range of other viruses. The results appeared in Nature on September 25, 2023.
The team found significant differences in the immune cells of participants with and without Long COVID. Those with Long COVID had higher levels of cells called non-conventional monocytes and activated B lymphocytes. They had lower levels of type 1 conventional dendritic cells and central memory T cells. These differences did not depend on age, sex, or body mass index. Participants with Long COVID also had different levels of immune signaling molecules.
Participants with Long COVID had much stronger antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein than those without Long COVID. They also had much stronger responses to an unrelated virus, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). EBV is a common herpesvirus that causes mononucleosis. After infection, it remains latent in the body and can sometimes reactivate. The higher levels of antibodies to EBV suggest recent reactivation of this virus.
When the researchers used machine learning to identify which features could best predict Long COVID status, they found that the strongest predictor was the stress hormone cortisol. People with Long COVID had much lower cortisol levels than those without. Other strong predictors of Long COVID included elevated levels of a protein called galectin-1, elevated antibodies against EBV, and reduced levels of certain immune cells.
These findings identify potential biomarkers that could help with diagnosing Long COVID. They also suggest possible mechanisms that contribute to Long COVID. These include a lingering presence of SARS-CoV-2 components in the body, reactivation of latent EBV, and chronic inflammation.
“These findings are important,” says Dr. David Putrino of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, one of the senior authors. “They can inform more sensitive testing for Long COVID patients and personalized treatments for Long COVID that have, until now, not had a proven scientific rationale. This is a decisive step forward in the development of valid and reliable blood testing protocols for Long COVID.”
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki of the Yale University School of Medicine, another senior author, says, “These findings tell us something about the underlying disease pathogenesis of Long COVID and suggest potential paths for therapy.”
SARS-CoV-2 infected coronary arteries and increased inflammation in atherosclerotic plaques.
The findings suggest how COVID-19 could increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Foam cells, which accumulate within arteries to form plaques in atherosclerosis, proved particularly susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2. Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock
COVID-19 is known to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. The intense inflammation that occurs throughout the body in severe cases likely contributes to this increased risk. But it’s not clear whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, also affects blood vessels directly.
To find out, an NIH-funded research team, led by Dr. Chiara Giannarelli at New York University School of Medicine, analyzed coronary artery tissue samples from eight people who died of COVID-19 between May 2020 and May 2021. Results appeared in Nature Cardiovascular Research on September 28, 2023.
The team found SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in coronary artery tissue from all patients. They found more viral RNA in the arterial walls than in the surrounding fat tissue. Many of the infected cells were macrophages, a type of white blood cell that ingests pathogens. Samples with more macrophages had more viral RNA.
Macrophages also help remove cholesterol from blood vessels. When macrophages become laden with cholesterol, they are known as foam cells. Accumulation of foam cells within arteries forms plaques that are a hallmark of atherosclerosis. The team confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 could infect human macrophages and foam cells in a petri dish. The foam cells were much more susceptible to infection than the macrophages. This could explain why people with atherosclerosis are more vulnerable to COVID-19.
In both cell types, infection depended on a protein on the surface of the cells called neuropilin. Turning off the gene for neuropilin in these cells reduced infection. So did blocking the virus from binding to neuropilin.
Infection triggered several inflammatory pathways in macrophages and foam cells. The cells also released molecules that are known to contribute to heart attacks and strokes. In arterial plaques that had been surgically removed from patients, the researchers saw an inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2 infection like that seen in the cultured cells.
The findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may increase the risk of heart attacks and stroke by infecting artery wall tissue, including associated macrophages. This provokes inflammation in atherosclerotic plaques, which could lead to heart attack or stroke.
“These results shed light onto a possible connection between preexisting heart issues and Long COVID symptoms,” Giannarelli says. “It appears that the immune cells most involved in atherosclerosis may serve as a reservoir for the virus, giving it the opportunity to persist in the body over time.”
“Since the early days of the pandemic, we have known that people who had COVID-19 have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease or stroke up to one year after infection,” says Dr. Michelle Olive of NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. “We believe we have uncovered one of the reasons why.”
The authors plan to further investigate the potential link between infection of the arteries and Long COVID. They also aim to see if their results also hold true for newer SARS-CoV-2 variants.
You have a “better chance of becoming Spider-Man” than being harmed by DNA from COVID vaccines
On Wednesday Florida’s state surgeon general Joseph Ladapo called for stopping the use of messenger RNA–based COVID vaccines, citing—without convincing evidence—concerns about DNA fragments from the vaccines entering the human genome. Experts, including those at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, say the claims are unfounded and that this warning could cause great harm by preventing people from getting a potentially lifesaving vaccine.
Last December Ladapo sent a letter to the commissioner of the FDA and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in which he questioned the safety of DNA fragments in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID mRNA vaccines. The letter laid out unfounded concerns about these fragments entering human cell nuclei in the presence of the lipid nanoparticles that are used to deliver the mRNA to cells. He also stated concerns about DNA contamination from a virus called simian virus 40 (SV40). Ladapo suggested that if such DNA were to be integrated into cells, it could activate cancer-causing genes or cause chromosomal instability.
That month the FDA said in a response letter that, “based on a thorough assessment of the entire manufacturing process, FDA is confident in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines.”
Many scientists have dismissed the risks Ladapo asserted. They include Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who serves on an FDA advisory committee for the COVID vaccines. The way mRNA vaccines are made does result in small amounts of DNA in the final product, Offit says—but that’s true of any vaccine grown in cells, including the measles and chickenpox vaccines. “There are trace quantities” of DNA (billionths to trillionths of a gram) per vaccine dose, “which is utterly and completely harmless for several reasons,” he says.
To make an mRNA vaccine against COVID, scientists start with circular pieces of DNA called plasmids that contain a gene for the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease. The plasmids are amplified into billions of copies inside of bacteria, and chemicals are then added to release them from the bacteria. Enzymes are used to cut the plasmids into linear pieces of DNA that encode the spike protein, and a different enzyme converts that DNA into mRNA. Another enzyme is added to chop any remaining DNA into tiny harmless fragments.
In order to enter human cell nuclei, any such residual viral DNA would first have to enter the cell’s main compartment, or cytoplasm, which normally keeps foreign DNA out. Next it would have to cross the nuclear membrane; this would be impossible without an access signal, which these fragments don’t have, Offit notes. The residual DNA would also have to integrate into the nuclear DNA, which would require DNA-cutting enzymes that aren’t present in the mRNA vaccine. The chances that mRNA vaccination would in any way affect your DNA “are zero,” Offit says.
This is not the first time Ladapo has questioned the safety of COVID mRNA vaccines. In 2022 he recommended against children age 17 or younger getting the vaccines, falsely claiming that the shots didn’t help and might even cause harm.
Scientist and physician Robert Malone also made unfounded claims about the supposed dangers of DNA fragments in mRNA vaccines altering human DNA when he testified in a November 2023 committee hearing held by Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
Offit points out that we encounter much greater quantities of foreign DNA all the time from the bacteria we’re exposed to and the plants and animals we eat. In his statement on Wednesday, Ladapo claimed that people can get other COVID vaccines that don’t use mRNA. Yet the only alternative in the U.S., made by the company Novavax, is grown in moth cells—which also contain DNA. “The minute you say the word DNA, people think, ‘Oh, my God, there’s DNA in this? Is that going to affect my DNA?’” Offit says. “But you have better chance of becoming Spider-Man” than being harmed by DNA from the COVID vaccines.
As for the concerns about simian virus 40, the COVID vaccines do not contain SV40 proteins or any genetic material encoding them. Although SV40 was a contaminant in early polio vaccines, it has not been shown to cause cancer in humans.
Offit acknowledges that any vaccine or medicine comes with potential risks as well as benefits. The Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine was found to cause rare and sometimes fatal blood clots in some people and was removed from the market. The mRNA vaccines, while largely safe, come with a small but nonzero risk of myocarditis, primarily in teenage boys and young men. The risk of myocarditis from COVID itself is higher, however, and COVID-related myocarditis tends to be more severe. For those concerned about mRNA vaccines, there are other vaccines available, such as the one made by Novavax.
Offit says the benefits of vaccination still clearly outweigh any risks. He recommends the primary series for everyone aged six months and older. He says getting the booster is less important for healthy young people, who are not the highest-risk group for hospitalization. People older than age 65 and people of any age with underlying health conditions that put them at risk of severe disease—including pregnant people—should definitely be up to date on their vaccine, he says. Additionally, recent studies have shown that receiving a vaccination followed by one or more boosters greatly reduces the risk of developing long COVID.
“There’s no avoiding risk,” Offit says. “People say, ‘I’m not going to risk that vaccine.’ Okay, so you’re going to risk the disease. Realize that that’s the risk you’re taking.”
Research shows that mRNA vaccines can produce foreign proteins in the human body—the effects of which are ‘unpredictable.’
A health care worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccine in Hong Kong in a file photograph. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
Dutch molecular biologist Dr. Maarten Fornerod warned that the world should be “very cautious with genetic medicines” while pointing to a recent study showing that mRNA vaccines produced foreign proteins that posed unknown risks.
In a Dec. 20 program on the German news platform Blckbx, Dr. Fornerod was asked about a Dec. 6 study published in Nature, which showed that the mRNA vaccines produced foreign proteins other than the spike protein aimed at immunization. “The consequences are that you get those unexpected proteins, those shuffled proteins, which actually have no known meaning for the cell,” Dr. Fornerod said.
“But just as with a word, if you shuffle the letters of a word, you sometimes also get a word that means something. And then the question is how does the cell react to that? What kind of instruction does it give to the cell? So that I think is, yes, that’s a possible danger.”
“If just a brain cell starts functioning less well, then, of course, after a while, you notice that the body functions less well,” Dr. Fornerod explained. “It has been shown that these foreign proteins can indeed elicit an immune response.”
A key problem is that the harmful effects of foreign proteins are “unpredictable,” the molecular biologist stated, adding that it was unknown how an organism, its immune system, and cells react to these proteins.
Even though only one in a thousand individuals may face such a problem, it becomes a major social issue once billions of people are injected with these mRNA vaccines, he warned.
Dr. Fornerod said, “We must be very cautious with genetic medicines. That means not only mRNA vaccines but also CRISPR-Cas. Also with genetic manipulation to cure diseases. You have to be very careful because there can be unexpected things that you can expect.”
He warned that similar consequences will be seen in other mRNA vaccines currently being developed by companies like Moderna and Pfizer.
“They have a whole array of mRNA vaccines slated against influenza, against RSV. But they will all suffer from this problem” of generating foreign proteins.
Study Implications
The Dec. 6 Nature study focused on the issue of foreign protein production triggered by mRNA injections. COVID-19 mRNA vaccines work by enabling the body to manufacture spike proteins that mimic the COVID-19 virus.
The body then reacts to spike proteins—generating protective immunity. If the COVID-19 virus were to enter the body in the future, this protective immunity would then neutralize the foreign invader.
However, researchers found that “the cellular machinery that ‘reads’ mRNAs ‘slips’ when confronted with repeats of a chemical modification commonly found in mRNA therapeutics,” according to the study’s press release.
A teenager receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine at Clalit Health Services in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Jan. 23, 2021. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
“In addition to the target protein, these slips lead to the production of ‘off-target’ proteins triggering an unintended immune response.”
In a recent interview with “American Thought Leaders,” critical care physician Dr. Paul Marik explained the process.
“Normally, messenger RNA (mRNA) has uridine. And that’s the way the body was made. But for this technology to work, they (vaccine manufacturers) had to substitute the uridine for a pseudouridine. And what the study shows is that when you put a pseudouridine in where uridine should be, the ribosome jumps or misreads messenger RNA.”
In cells, ribosomes produce proteins from amino acids. When mRNA vaccines are injected, the ribosome reads the mRNA to produce the protein.
However, due to the ribosome misreading the mRNA because of the pseudouridine, “it results in a bogus protein being made. So instead of making spike protein, it makes a nonsense protein that is possibly toxic.”
Researchers from multiple organizations, including Cambridge and Oxford, conducted the study.
Foreign Proteins Risk
Dutch nonprofit group “The Doctors Collective” pointed out in a Dec. 15 post that according to the Nature study, foreign proteins can make “up to 10 percent of the total production” of proteins.
Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine vials are seen in a file photo. (Shutterstock)
“The unforeseen proteins that are made are unnatural,” it said. One of the tests conducted by the study showed that the foreign proteins were “induced in five of the 21 Pfizer mRNA vaccinees studied,” which roughly comes to one in four study participants.
It is “unpredictable” what these foreign proteins could do in a cell, it noted while suggesting these proteins may end up disrupting “an important process.” They can also “trigger harmful immune responses in some people.”
“The Doctors Collective believes that the precautionary principle should take precedence and that due to all the unexpected problems with this technology, appropriate safety studies should first be done, and no further experimentation on the population should be allowed,” the group stated.
In the Dec. 20 German program, Dr. Fornerod was asked whether vaccine manufacturers knew about the mRNA vaccines generating foreign proteins. “I assume not. But, they didn’t look very carefully either,” he replied.
The manufacturers “checked whether the code produced an approximately correct large product. But not in human cells. And they did not further check if the protein they could detect indeed had the correct composition,” Dr. Fornerod said.
“And they also saw smaller products being created. But they never checked what that actually was. The EMA (European Medicines Agency) did ask them, I believe. But there was never a clear answer on that.”
Immunologist Prof. Theo Schetters, who was also on the program, pointed out that the Nature study complicates the dangers posed by mRNA vaccines.
Apart from the production of strange proteins, mRNA vaccines have also been shown to have “DNA contaminations in them,” he said.
“We don’t want those either. That goes into your cells through those particles, too, just like that. And if it ends up in dividing cells, there’s a good chance that pieces of DNA (contaminant) are simply built into your DNA.”
One case report involving a 15-year-old girl suggests COVID-19 may cause paralysis in the vocal cords.
While it’s known that the COVID-19 virus can damage the lungs, it can be equally harmful to many other organs.
On Dec. 19, 2023, the journal Pediatrics published a case report detailing a 15-year-old girl who, after contracting COVID-19, developed complications leading to bilateral vocal cord paralysis and necessitating a tracheostomy for breathing. The tracheostomy device remained in place for 15 months before it was finally removed.
The girl experienced symptoms of nasal congestion, fever, and fatigue two weeks before the onset of vocal cord paralysis. She then tested positive for COVID-19 using a home antigen test. Nine days later, she exhibited symptoms of acute shortness of breath that worsened during physical activity, prompting her admission to the emergency department at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The patient displayed intermittent noisy breathing, but blood oxygen saturation was normal. Furthermore, a series of tests, including those for COVID-19, all returned negative results. Notably, she has a history of asthma and anxiety. Suspecting an asthma attack, the doctor prescribed steroids and bronchodilators, but there was no improvement. The patient also underwent speech therapy, but it similarly yielded no results.
After admission, the patient continued to experience noisy breathing and developed difficulty swallowing, weakness on the left side, “pins and needles,” and unsteady gait. She underwent consultations with otolaryngology, psychiatry, neurology, speech pathology, and neurosurgery. A laryngeal scope examination revealed a severe bilateral reduction in her vocal cords’ range of motion. The weakness on her left side and the pins-and-needles feeling were determined to be likely functional, but the possibility of a COVID-19-related cause could not be ruled out.
To alleviate respiratory symptoms, the doctor injected botulinum toxin (Botox) into the girl’s throat muscles—a proven method for treating certain throat conditions in children. Unfortunately, the symptoms persisted. Subsequently, the patient underwent a tracheostomy, which relieved the symptoms. However, her vocal cord function remained impaired, and as of the writing of the case report, she has been dependent on a tracheostomy for 13 months.
COVID-19 in Children
Children comprise 18 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases in the United States. Previous research has shown that the COVID-19 virus can lead to neurological complications, including headaches, seizures, and peripheral neuropathy. This recent case suggests that vocal cord paralysis may be another neurological sequela of the virus.
Dr. Danielle Reny Larrow, the lead author of the case report and a resident at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, stated in a press release that considering the prevalence of the COVID-19 virus in children, any child presenting with breathing, talking, or swallowing symptoms after recent COVID-19 infection should be evaluated for this potential new complication. She emphasized that such symptoms could easily be attributed to more common conditions like asthma.
Dr. Christopher Hartnick, director of the Division of Pediatric Otolaryngology and the Pediatric Airway, Voice, and Swallowing Center at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, stated that after the submission of the case report, doctors were finally able to remove the tracheostomy device from the patient. This allowed her to attend her high school graduation ceremony and prom, marking 15 months since her initial tracheostomy procedure.
COVID-Induced Vocal Cord Paralysis in Adults
According to a case report released by researchers from the Mount Sinai Health System in the United States in 2021, from May 2020 to January 2021, at least 16 adults were identified with vocal fold paralysis or muscle weakness. Patients consistently reported a change in their voice when initially experiencing upper respiratory tract infections and COVID-19 symptoms. The time from symptom onset to seeking medical attention varied from one to seven months, with an average of three months. Four patients underwent laryngeal electromyography (LEMG) examinations, confirming a 100 percent diagnosis of neuropathy.
The report described the mechanisms of neuropathy following viral infection, including direct viral infection causing acute inflammation of the nerves, viral fusion with DNA in the neural ganglia, where it remains dormant until reactivated by external factors, and immune-mediated response leading to antibody production. These antibodies then destroy the myelin sheath enveloping neurons, resulting in neuropathy. Post-viral vagal neuropathy commonly occurs following an acute upper respiratory tract infection, resulting in impairment of both sensory and motor functions of the vagus nerve.
According to the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, vocal cord paralysis can be temporary or permanent. Bilateral vocal cord paralysis is rare and may pose a risk of suffocation, as closely situated vocal cords can obstruct airflow into the trachea and lungs. Surgical intervention may be necessary in cases of permanent vocal cord paralysis.
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