Tag: signal

Can Vaccines Cause Rhabdomyolysis?

The urine is dark because of myoglobinuria secondary to muscle break down. Hemoglobinuria, from blood, is the other thing that makes urine dark. Photo Kumar et al (CC BY-NC-SA *3.0* US).

You have probably never heard of rhabdomyolysis.

Children with rhabdomyolysis have severe muscle pain, muscle weakness, and dark urine.

It is classically caused by exercising too much (really overdoing it or exercising a lot more or a lot longer than you typically do) and damaging your muscles, leading to a breakdown of muscle cells and the release of creatine kinase, which in addition to muscle symptoms, can lead to kidney failure.

In addition to exercise, rhabdomyolysis can be caused by seizures, drugs, toxins, insect stings, snake bites, metabolic disorders, infections (viral myositis), and trauma.

“The most common causes of pediatric rhabdomyolysis were viral myositis (38%), trauma (26%), and connective tissue disease (5%).”
Mannix et al on Acute Pediatric Rhabdomyolysis: Causes and Rates of Renal Failure

Keep in mind that rhabdomyolysis is rare. You won’t confuse the aches and pains that most kids get, and which often get blamed on growing pains, with rhabdomyolysis. Although younger kids don’t always have dark urine when they have rhabdo, the pain and weakness is severe. Seek immediate medical attention if you think that your child might have rhabdomyolysis.

Can Vaccines Cause Rhabdomyolysis?

It is well known that rhabdomyolysis can be caused by infections.

“Rhabdomyolysis has been reported to be associated with a variety of viral infections, including influenza, [15,16] Coxsackie virus, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), echovirus and cytomegalovirus [17]. In our series, the definite viral infection was identified in 5 patients (influenza type B in 4, Coxsackie A10 in 1)”
Chen et al on Clinical spectrum of rhabdomyolysis presented to pediatric emergency department

So if a natural influenza virus infection can cause rhabdomyolysis, does that mean that the flu vaccine can too? What about other vaccines?

Not necessarily, but there are a few case reports that associate vaccines with rhabdomyolysis.

“Influenza A infection has been described as a major viral cause of infection-induced rhabdomyolysis, but to date, only one reported case was described as having been induced by influenza vaccine.”
Callado et al on Rhabdomyolysis secondary to influenza A H1N1 vaccine resulting in acute kidney injury.

In several of the reports, patients already had chronic medical problems for which they were being treated. Still, no signal was found to suggest that the flu vaccine is a problem for these patients.

It is important to note that reports of post-vaccination rhabdomyolysis in healthy people are even rarer.

So while it is could be possible that vaccines are rarely associated with rhabdomyolysis, we know that many infections, including many vaccine-preventable diseases, are a more common cause.

Don’t skip or delay a vaccine because you might have heard that vaccines cause rhabdomyolysis.

Vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are obviously necessary.

VigiAccess Numbers in Context

Most people are familiar with VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

They sometimes forget that it is only the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for the United States.

Other countries have their own vaccine safety systems.

VigiAccess Numbers in Context

One of the biggest is VigiBase, the World Health Organization’s global database for suspected adverse drug reactions, maintained by the Uppsala Monitoring Centre in Sweden.

“Information on suspected ADR should not be interpreted as meaning that the medicinal product in question, or the active substance(s), generally causes the observed effect or is unsafe to use.”

Not surprisingly, folks misuse VigiBase numbers, just like they misuse VAERS reports.

JB Handley needs help understanding VigiAccess reports.

To look at the VigiBase reports, you can use VigiAccess.

“VigiAccess has a search interface that allows visitors to retrieve summary statistics on suspected adverse reactions to medicines and vaccines.”

Uppsala Monitoring Centre

While VigiBase “is at the heart of UMC’s signal detection and scientific research,” you aren’t going to learn much from VigiAccess.

“Geographically, only continent-level statistics are shown, due to issues relating to patient confidentiality and data protection in individual countries.”

Uppsala Monitoring Centre

The biggest problem?

You don’t know how many vaccines were given to all of those people.

For example, while it might sound like there have been a lot of adverse drug reaction reports for the DTaP vaccine, with 179,447 reports in VigiAccess, since those are worldwide reports since 1968, it is likely among many billions of doses of vaccines being given.

Most importantly though, as with VAERS, “The reports in VigiBase result from suspicions of a relationship between a drug and a reaction. No causal relation has been confirmed.”

So how do you put the numbers from VigiBase and VigiAccess in context?

If you consider that reports and safety signals from VigiBase, VigiMatch, VigiRank, and other tools used by the Uppsala Monitoring Centre continue to find that vaccines are safe, then to put the DTaP numbers in context, they help us know that vaccines are being well monitored for safety.

And since we know that these diseases haven’t disappeared, any further context, if you need it, would be that since vaccines are safe and necessary, then you should get yourself and your family vaccinated and protected.

About the Cochrane HPV Controversy

Have you heard about the Cochrane HPV controversy?

What controversy?

Well, yeah, but anti-vaccine folks are crowing about what is essentially a letter that was published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine journal.

About the Cochrane HPV Controversy

What’s the controversy?

Seems that the folks at Cochrane Reviews recently published a review, Prophylactic vaccination against human papillomaviruses to prevent cervical cancer and its precursors, which concluded that the HPV vaccines work and that they are safe.

That doesn’t sound controversial…

Well, it seems that some other folks, associated with the Nordic Cochrane Center, disagreed. They published an “analysis” in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias.

So who do we believe when we have Cochrane vs Cohrane?

Who is the Nordic Cochrane Centre?

Some people will be familiar with the Nordic Cochrane Centre because of their involvement in complaints about the HPV vaccine that were investigated by the European Medicines Agency.

Cochrane Nordic has been filing multiple complaints with the EMA about HPV vaccine safety for years.

Complaints that were initially triggered by a case series that was published by Dr. Louise Brinth, when she was head of the Danish Syncope Group, but who is now part of the Nordic Cochrane Centre.

While the Cochrane Collaboration has a very good reputation, you can't really say the same about the Nordic Cochrane Centre. — While the Cochrane Collaboration has a very good reputation, you can’t really say the same about the Nordic Cochrane Centre.

Complaints that were not approved by the Cochrane Collaboration and that were not an official Cochrane viewpoint!

“…we highlight here how academic colleagues, under the purported banner of a respected authority, raise concerns about the HPV vaccine but they cite an evidence base of small and poor quality studies and ignore the extensive wealth of global literature that vividly demonstrate the excellent efficacy and safety record of the vaccine.”

Head et al on Inadvisable anti-vaccination sentiment: Human Papilloma Virus immunisation falsely under the microscope

Complaints that had already been investigated and dismissed by the European Medicines Agency.

“In conclusion, in clinical trials conducted in the 9 to 26-year- old age range, vaccination was generally well tolerated with no apparent adverse health impact following completion of the vaccination regimen.”

Block et al Clinical trial and post-licensure safety profile of a prophylactic human papillomavirus (types 6, 11, 16, and 18) l1 virus-like particle vaccine.

Complaints that are also refuted by many other studies.

So we don’t actually have Cochrane vs Cochrane…

The Cochrane HPV Review

Once you read the complaint against the Cochrane HPV review, you realize that this isn’t even just about the Cochrane HPV review.

The main faults that the Nordic Cochrane Centre folks found is that the Cochrane review left out a bunch of what they consider to be eligible HPV vaccine trials, even though “twenty-six randomised trials were identified that contained data on vaccine efficacy and/or safety, which all together enrolled 73,428 women.”

But if this was just about a systemic review which didn’t stick to protocol about which studies to include, then why do the Nordic Cochrane Centre folks go on and on about placebos and active comparators?

“The Cochrane authors mistakenly used the term placebo to describe the active comparators.”

Lars Jørgensen et al. on The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and
ignored important evidence of bias

Would you be surprised to know that one of Nordic Cochrane Centre’s arguments to the EMA was about placebos?

“In all the vaccine trials apart from a small one, the “placebo” contained aluminium adjuvant, which is suspected of being neurotoxic.”

Cochrane Nordic Complaint to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) over maladministration at the EMA

Why do they talk about placebos?

Most of these folks want pure saline placebos to be used in clinical trials, even though doing so would make it hard to keep the trials blinded.

Placebos don’t have to be inert though. The BMJ and the Nordic Cochrane Centre authors mistakenly corrected the Cochrane authors on their use of the term placebo.

They make plenty of other mistakes too.

“The Cochrane authors did not mention a study from 2017 by the WHO UMC that found serious harms following HPV vaccination overlapping with two syndromes: postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS).”

Lars Jørgensen et al. on The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and
ignored important evidence of bias

What study?

Jørgensen cites a commentary that describes “a signal based on both spontaneous reports and published case series that is best characterized as a potential association between HPV vaccination and dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system.”

“There is currently no conclusive evidence to support a causal relationship between the HPV vaccine and POTS. It is of utmost importance to recognize that although temporal associations may be observed, conclusions of causality cannot be drawn from case reports and case series due to the small sample size and lack of control population inherent to this type of scientific literature. If POTS does develop after receiving the HPV vaccine, it would appear to do so in a small subset of individuals and would be difficult to distinguish from the normal prevalence and incidence of the disorder.”

Butts et al on Human Papillomavirus Vaccine and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome: A Review of Current Literature

So who do you believe?

Researchers who published a systemic review as part of the Cochrane Review Groups that confirms that the HPV works and that it is safe, or a group who seems to have an axe to grind against the HPV vaccines?

Update on the Cochrane HPV Controversy

Apparently, Cochrane has taken the Nordic Cochrane Centre complaints seriously enough to launch an investigation.

“Our current investigations appear to show that there may be a handful of missed but potentially eligible studies, but that this falls substantially below ‘nearly half of the eligible trials’.”

David Tovey, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library

And not surprisingly, Tovey stated that “To date, we also have no reason to believe that the main conclusions of the review relating to benefit and serious adverse effects are unsafe.”

And yet, as with their complaints to the EMA, resources get wasted as the attacks are put down.

VAXOPEDIA