mRNA technology, originally developed for cancer treatment and travelled to the general public through COVID-19 vaccines, is now at the center of a new scientific debate. A review published in the Lancet confirms the link of mRNA vaccines with rare cases of myocarditis, mainly in young men, stressing, however, that the risk from COVID-19 disease remains clearly higher.
The story behind mRNA
It is worth remembering that the application of mRNA technology was not born suddenly during the pandemic. Behind it there were decades of research. In Germany, the Turkish-born scientist couple Ugur Sahin and Özlem Tureci, co-founders of BioNTech, worked for years on the use of mRNA primarily for cancer immunotherapy. BioNTech itself reports that the company was founded in 2008 to turn scientific discoveries into treatments, while Shaheen and Tureji had an early focus on mRNA dynamics.
In fact, mRNA technology does not have a single "father". The contribution of Catalin Kariko and Drew Weissmann, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2023 for discoveries that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, was also decisive.
The pandemic accelerated everything
When the coronavirus appeared, the research that had begun on cancer was urgently used to develop a vaccine. This was done at an unprecedented time for pharmaceutical research. And herein lies the big debate: vaccines did not go through the classic multi-year cycle that the public knew until then about the development of new formulations before mass use.
However, proper wording is crucial. The procedures were compressed in time, with parallel phases, huge funding, continuous data evaluation and rolling review by the regulatory authorities. The European Medicines Agency points out that COVID-19 vaccines could only be approved if they met the quality, safety and efficacy requirements of European legislation, while companies could combine phases or conduct certain studies in parallel, where it was safe to do so.
Myocarditis and pericarditis: How common were they?
The point that caused the greatest concern was myocarditis and pericarditis, i.e. inflammation in the heart muscle and the sheath of the heart. The new review states that post-vaccination cases were more frequent after the second dose: about 12.6 cases per million doses for Pfizer and 35.6 per million for Moderna. In simple percentages, this corresponds to about 0.00126% for Pfizer and 0.00356% for Moderna.
CDC data in the US shows that the risk was clearly higher in younger men. After the second dose of mRNA, 40.6 cases of myocarditis were recorded per million doses in men 12-29 years of age, compared to 4.2 per million in women in the same age group. In men over 30 years of age the ratio was 2.4 per million and in women over 30 years of age 1 per million.
Even more analytically, a study in JAMA recorded the highest rates after the second dose in boys aged 12-15, with 70.7 cases per million doses of Pfizer, in boys aged 16-17 with 105.9 per million, and in young men aged 18-24 with 52.4 per million for Pfizer and 56.3 per million for Moderna. That is, even in the highest group, we are talking about about 0.01059%.
The conclusion of science today
The main conclusion is not that there were no side effects. There were. The conclusion is that, based on the data available to date, they were rare, monitored, recorded and evaluated. The CDC reports that post-vaccination myocarditis and pericarditis are rare, occurring more frequently in adolescents and young men within the first week after the second dose, and most patients respond well to treatment and rest.
The big picture is that mRNA technology does not close with the coronavirus. On the contrary, it paves the way. The same review notes prospects for vaccines against influenza, RSV and other infectious diseases, but also for personalized cancer vaccines and RNA-based therapies.
Health, therefore, does not proceed without questions. It moves forward because it asks questions, measures risks, corrects, monitors, and reviews. mRNA has been the child of long research, tested under conditions of global pressure, and is now being evaluated with the composure of the data. And this is perhaps the most useful answer to the debate opened by the pandemic.
huffposts.gr
