{"id":8419,"date":"2023-11-28T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=8419"},"modified":"2023-11-28T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T02:00:00","slug":"what-is-long-vax-symptoms-linked-to-covid-19-shot-baffle-docs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=8419","title":{"rendered":"What is \u2018long vax\u2019? Symptoms linked to COVID-19 shot baffle docs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Marc Lallanilla<\/a>, Published July 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve heard of \u201clong COVID,\u201d the cases of people who can\u2019t shake the lingering symptoms of COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now comes \u201clong vax\u201d \u2014 a rare, but baffling set of symptoms that follow a small number of people for months after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou see one or two patients and you wonder if it\u2019s a coincidence,\u201d Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander, a neurologist and researcher at Harvard Medical School, told Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut by the time you\u2019ve seen 10, 20 [patients],\u201d she said, \u201cwhere there\u2019s smoke, there\u2019s fire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cases are very rare \u2014 even less common than the few reported cases of long COVID \u2014 and medical experts are still analyzing data to determine what might be behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Symptoms of long vax can mimic those of long COVID: headaches, intense fatigue and abnormal heart rate and blood pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patients are also telling their doctors about tingling, electric shock\u2013like sensations, burning pain and blood circulation issues that appear weeks, days or even hours after receiving the COVID-19 shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other patients have symptoms resembling those of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, including weakness, swings in heart rate and blood pressure, fatigue and brain fog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Symptoms<\/a>
Symptoms of long vax can mimic those of long COVID: headaches, intense fatigue and abnormal heart rate and blood pressure.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fear of anti-vaxxers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many doctors are hesitant to openly discuss the possibility of a long vax syndrome, fearing it will be seized upon by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists who\u2019ll try to discredit a vaccine that has saved countless millions of lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t rule out rare cases,\u201d said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration\u2019s vaccine division. Doctors \u201cmay want to take seriously the concept [of] a vaccine side effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Marks and others worry about \u201cthe sensational headline\u201d that could mislead the public, since the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine far outweigh the risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my obligation, if I truly am a scientist, to have an open mind and learn if there\u2019s something that can be done,\u201d said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m persuaded that there\u2019s something going on\u201d with these side effects, Krumholz added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LISTEN to patients<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Krumholz and his colleague, Yale immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, have started a post-vaccination study called LISTEN<\/a>, for Listen to Immune, Symptom and Treatment Experiences Now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of their research is to \u201cunderstand long COVID, post-vaccine adverse events and the corresponding immune responses by collecting information about symptoms and medical history from participants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledge<\/a> that \u201c[a]ny vaccine can cause side effects,\u201d adding that these are mostly \u201cminor (for example, a sore arm or low-grade fever) and go away within a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, the inactivated influenza shot can, in rare cases, cause Guillain-Barr\u00e9 syndrome (GBS), an immune disorder that causes muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the CDC reports that \u201ctiredness, muscle pain, headache, shivering, fever, stomach pain and nausea are common after recombinant shingles vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for the overwhelming majority of people, vaccines are safe and effective, and any side effects are usually temporary and minor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could it be POTS?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Still, an intriguing number of long vax reports have come trickling in from doctors and researchers around the globe \u2014 particularly cases of POTS overlapping with COVID-19 infection or, less frequently, after vaccination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POTS causes a number of symptoms when a person moves from lying down to standing up, such as a rapid heart rate, dizziness and fatigue, according to the Cleveland Clinic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The condition can occur during pregnancy, with a head injury or other trauma, after surgery or following an infection like viral mononucleosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers are continuing to investigate cases of POTS, both after COVID-19 infection and after vaccination.540<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs researchers study links between COVID-19 vaccines and uncommon side effects, they have found a slight increase in the number of people who have experienced postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) following vaccination,\u201d the National Institutes of Health stated<\/a> in a December 2022 report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, this association is five times less common compared to people who developed POTS after having COVID,\u201d the NIH added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marc Lallanilla, Published July 2023 You\u2019ve heard of \u201clong COVID,\u201d the cases of people who can\u2019t shake the lingering symptoms of COVID-19. Now comes \u201clong vax\u201d \u2014 a rare, but baffling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[854,289,972,607,608],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leaky-vaccines","category-long-haul-disease","category-vaccine-enhanced-disease","category-vaccine-news","category-vaccine-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}