In recent months, numerous comments alluding to an alleged increase in cases of sudden deaths from cardiac or cerebral events.
Among other issues, it has been given to understand in a more or less veiled way that many of those cases of suddenly may be caused by adverse reactions from vaccines in front of coronavirus cause of the Covid-19 pandemic.
CuídatePlus has contacted the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) and the Spanish Society of Cardiology (SEC) to ask their representatives if there is an increase in cases of stroke, heart attacks and other cardiovascular pathologies And if so, why?.
Have stroke cases increased?
The incidence of cerebrovascular accidents or strokes has stabilized in the Western world since 2011. This trend has to do, probably, “with better treatment and control of cardioembolic stroke, which today is the one that predominates,” he explains. Tomás Segura, head of the Neurology Service of the Albacete Hospital and member of the SEN. Other types of stroke, more related to the accumulation of atheromatous plaque in the arteries (atherosclerosis), had been reducing long before “thanks to campaigns against smoking and promoting control of blood pressure, sugar and blood sugar.” cholesterol, which are key factors in atheromatous disease.
Between 2012 and 2020, due in large part to the improvement in anticoagulation treatments, “the stroke rate had dropped for the first time in history,” highlights the neurologist. Thus, a continuous rhythm of ascent was broken due to the fact that “Life expectancy increases and the older a person is, the more likely they are to have arterial problems”.
But the downward trend was “abruptly broken in 2020 for different reasons”. After the pandemic broke out, strokes have grown again: “We have seen more in 2021 than in 2018”. Has the proportion of young patients increased? “The answer is no”, affirms Segura resoundingly. “Between 10% and 15% of all strokes have occurred in people under 50 years of age for many years.”
Regarding the reasons for the increase, the specialist acknowledges that the first thing to think about “is that thepeople are doing worse prevention”. In his opinion, “if primary medicine, hospital check-ups, etc., don’t work just as well. the normal thing is that the rate of ictus increases ”.
Surely there are more factors involved. “The second possibility would be that the fact of having had an infection that has affected practically the entire population has generated an increase in strokes”, he continues. “And this is described for almost all infections,” she adds.
The relationship between infections and the increase in thrombi (blood clots) that can cause strokes has been studied, above all, in the gripe. “When the flu wave comes, up to at least 6 months later, strokes multiply by two or three,” Segura corroborates. This is because influenza virus infection triggers an inflammatory state to defend against her. “And the inflammatory state always leads to a prothrombotic state” which increases the chances of developing a stroke or heart attack, especially in people with a greater predisposition.
Does the same happen in the case of Covid-19? “Probably”, according to the expert. “There are countless works, among them those that we have done in my hospital, which show that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is especially harmful to blood vessels (veins and arteries)”. However, Segura clarifies that there are still no studies that demonstrate this link as reliably as in the case of the flu, but “we will begin to have them.”
How does the vaccine influence strokes?
respect to The possible relationship of coronavirus vaccines with the increase in strokethe specialist points out that there is no, at least for the moment, no evidence. “It’s biologically plausible,” she acknowledges. “In fact, if it has already been studied specifically for the flu vaccine in the past, it is because every scientist knows that a vaccine produces – although not as much as an infection – a prothrombotic reaction.” Not in vain, what is pursued when a vaccine is administered to a person is “to develop inflammation and produce antibodies”, which in turn can generate a certain prothrombotic situation.
Studies on the flu vaccine revealed, at the time, that it does not increase the risk of stroke or myocardial infarction. “But it does increase it, and a lot, the flu itself,” highlights the neurologist. “Therefore, we are interested in vaccinating people when they have a certain risk.”
The vaccine against Covid-19 has not only been inoculated to risk groups, but to the entire population. “We still do not have data on what proportion have suffered vascular phenomena; It will have to be studied.” Segura’s team is carrying out an analysis of this issue in a cohort of doctors and nurses from his hospital, who have had blood samples taken before and after giving them the vaccine. The objective is to measure with specific biomarkers if their blood is more coagulable and they have a higher risk of thrombus formation. Preliminary results in the first 50 patients reveal that the vaccine does not induce a prothrombotic state. “The vaccine hypothesis must be tested,” concludes the neurologist, “but it is more unlikely than that of the infection itself.”
Are heart attacks and other cardiac events increasing?
Sources from the Spanish Society of Cardiology (SEC) specify that there is no evidence that in recent times there has been a change in the trend in the incidence of the diseases they treat. “We do not have data to confirm that deaths from heart attacks or other cardiovascular events are increasing”, they point out.
Regarding vaccines, they refer to a study that was presented at the last national congress of this scientific society, whose conclusions are clear: “The vast majority of cases of myocarditis and pericarditis associated with vaccines against Covid-19 evolve favorably and without complications.
Cases of inflammatory heart disease (myocarditis and pericarditis) after the administration of the vaccine mainly affect young men and appear especially in the first week after the administration of the second dose of a messenger RNA-type vaccine. In the SEC study, which included 139 patients from 27 Spanish hospitals, mortality from these causes was nil. Although 8.6% of the admitted patients suffered at least one serious complication during the acute inflammatory phase, none died.
