Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine Blood Clots
If you haven't heard yet, the FDA and CDC announced today that they are recommending everyone to undergo a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution. The official statement on the CDC website is as follows:
“As of April 12, more than 6.8 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen ) vaccine have been administered in the U.S. CDC and FDA are reviewing data involving six reported U.S. cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the J&J vaccine. In these cases, a type of blood clot called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) was seen in combination with low levels of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia). All six cases occurred among women between the ages of 18 and 48, and symptoms occurred 6 to 13 days after vaccination. Treatment of this specific type of blood clot is different from the treatment that might typically be administered. Usually, an anticoagulant drug called heparin is used to treat blood clots. In this setting, administration of heparin may be dangerous, and alternative treatments need to be given.”
So what's really going on here let's break this down..
What Is This Blood Clot?
There are two major types of blood vessels in your body: arteries and veins.
Arteries carry blood full of oxygen away from the heart towards organs in order to provide oxygen to all of the tissues in your body.
Once the oxygen is dropped off, veins then carry blood with no oxygen, or deoxygenated blood, back towards the heart and this cycle continues
Sometimes, for a number of different reasons, the blood cells within your blood vessels become stuck together forming what is known as a blood clot. This usually occurs in veins for reasons that are beyond the scope of this post. They frequently occur within the deep veins of the legs and when this happens its called a deep vein thrombosis or DVT, which is something you may have heard of before.
The peculiar thing about the J&J situation is in all 6 of these cases, a blood clot occurred in the veins of the brain. Let me explain..
Your brain has its own set of special arteries and veins because the brain is obviously pretty important. In particular, there is a special vein system called the dural venous sinuses that allow the blood to flow from the brain back to the heart. It's within this system that a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST will form. This is the type of blood clot that formed in each of the J&J cases. You can think of this as a deep vein thrombosis of the brain. The problem is the treatment, which is outside the scope of this post, but know that the treatment is much more complex then just treating a DVT.
Why This May Have Happened
There are a couple of different reasons why this may be occurring.
It's important to look at the age distribution and the patient population this has been affecting. CVSTs usually occur in individuals that are prone to blood clots, and in medicine we call this phenomenon being in a hypercoaguable state. Again, this is a fancy word for someone being prone to getting blood clots for various reasons. There are a myriad of different things that have been known to put individuals at risk of being in a hypercoaguable state. The most common things are smoking, pregnancy, and OCPs (birth control). Again looking at the age distribution of all 6 of these cases, they were in young women aged 18-48. Now many women of this age range are fertile and can easily become pregnant and for those who don't want to become pregnant, many women are on a form of oral birth control. After the age of 18, the use of cigarettes is legal, which also makes this an option for this age group. These are thus reasons why this vaccine for whatever reason has specifically affected this patient population with the particular side effect of CVST
The mechanism by which the J&J vaccine provides immunity may be responsible for this side effect. Essentially, a different virus is taken that is modified with its genetic code similar to COVID19 is injected into your body. This virus, again specifically the adenovirus, one injected into the body begins to create spike proteins that are analogous in shape and structure to COVID19s. Your body then recognizes these spike proteins as foreign and creates antibodies against them. This way, when the real coronavirus enters your body with identical spike proteins, your immune system already knows them to be foreign and wipes out the coronavirus before it can be super harmful. If you'd like to know more information about what a recombinant vector is and how the J&J vaccine actually works, click HERE
If you recently got the J&J vaccine in the last 3 weeks and have any developing signs of a severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath please visit your local health care provider immediately
Lastly I would like to say that my sincere thoughts and prayers go out to the individuals who have had to deal with the side effects
If you'd like to know more information about a specific COVID19 topic that I haven't covered, please get in touch!
