Medicine: Anti-Cavid vaccines are sure

The four anti-Cavid vaccines used in France are safe, reaffirms the drug agency on Tuesday in its latest assessment of adverse effects, specifying in particular that no link with Charcot disease was established after a post-vaccination case .

The new results of the pharmacovigilance surveys of the National Agency for Medicines Safety (ANSM), on data from January 2023 to February 2024, “show again that the vaccines against the COVVI-19 are safe,” said -Is in a press release.

These surveys-one dedicated to pregnant women who are breastfeeding the declarations of undesirable effects reported for the four vaccines against the covid-19-the Cumirnaty of Pfizer/Biontech, Spikevax (Moderna), Nuvaxovid (Novavax, replaced Since then by Nuvaxovid XBB) and VidPrevtyn Beta (Sanofi/GSK)- available in France.

No new risk signal at “pregnant and lactating women” appeared concerning Nuvaxovid -very little used vaccines in France -and VidPrevtyn Beta -the marketing authorization was then repealed, in March 2024.

To date, “more than 152 million doses” of anti-Cavid vaccines “have been administered” in France,-and 13 billion doses worldwide-and some “163,000 reports of suspected potential adverse effects have been recorded “in France, said to AFP Mehdi Benkebil, director of surveillance of the ANSM.

“All of these cases have been the subject of analyzes at regional and national level. As a comparison, annually we receive around 40,000 cases for all medicines! “, He said, highlighting the” colossal analysis work “represented by the” reinforced monitoring “of anti- COVID.

If the benefit/risk of COVIVS vaccines is very positive, certain side or unwanted effects have been highlighted, the most frequently mild, or rare when they are more impressive.

Apart from the most frequent adverse effects linked to the immediate reaction of the body to injection, rare cases of peripheral facial paralysis (partial loss of the functioning of part of the face), myocarditis/pericarditis (inflammation of the muscle muscle heart), significant menstrual bleeding, and polymorphic erythema (rash of skin tasks) were thus identified.

In its assessment of the new effects reported and hitherto not listed, the ANSM notes that “very rare cases” of “burn -type pain, mainly at the level of the feet and lower limbs (neuropathies with small fibers), are Appeared “with the Pfizer vaccine, and other cases,” very rare “also, of chronic fatigue, with the Spikevax vaccine.

They “are the subject of additional investigations” which could lead to “measures adapted to nature and risk level, in connection with the European Medicines Agency (EMA)”, indicates the agency.

“Recently reported after vaccination with the vaccine” Pfizer, a case of Charcot disease (SLA), has been analyzed and “the data available to date” does not “allow you to retain a link” between the occurrence of the disease and The vaccine, writes the ANSM, after a “college exam with the regional pharmacovigilance centers”.

This case is that of a thirties of the Allier, whose family and an association of victims have largely communicated on social networks and in the regional press around an supposed “official recognition” of a causal link between his illness and this vaccination.

The regional pharmacovigilance center sent a letter indicating that the reporting of the case was “registered, generating a file” with a view to “expertise work”, but “no causal link was made” between the Illness and the vaccine, said to AFP Professor Joëlle Micallef, pharmacologist, at the head of one of the 10 regional centers (PACA-Corse) to assess cases over the whole of France.

Already in 2022, the ANSM had examined about fifteen post-vaccination SLA reports, reports this expert.

“If these patients were well affected by SLA”, the vaccination cause had been dismissed in particular “because medically and pathophysiologically, Charcot’s disease cannot be triggered within such a short time,” she said.

“With this last case also, there are currently no data, arguments, to evoke the direct or indirect role of the vaccine in the occurrence of this disease,” she concludes.

Since the start of vaccination, the undesirable effects of COVID vaccines have been widely highlighted by their opponents, who have sometimes relayed messages of disinformation.