Israeli health officials have found a “possible link” between the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine and hundreds of cases of myocarditis in young men, the government announced Wednesday.
“There is some probability for a possible link between the second vaccine dose and the onset of myocarditis,” or inflammation of the heart linked to viral infection, among men ages 16 to 30, the Israeli health ministry reported. “In most cases, myocarditis took the form of mild illness that passed within a few days.”
Cases of myocarditis were most common in younger men, ages 16 to 19, usually after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine, health officials added. Most of the patients with cardiac inflammation have remained in the hospital for about four days, and the vast majority of those cases, about 95%, were considered to be mild.
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The government recorded 275 cases of myocarditis between December 2020 and late May 2021, including 148 around the time of vaccination. Of those total 148 cases linked to the vaccines, 121 of those occurred within 30 days of receiving the second dose of the two-shot vaccine, while 27 cases occurred after the first dose. About half of all cases occurred in people with underlying health conditions.
Government health officials were first alerted to the rise in myocarditis cases mostly in young men following the second shots in April, leading to the establishment of an epidemiological team tasked with investigating the link. Members of the investigative task force include public health experts from the Department of Epidemiology, experts from the National Center for Disease Control, and academics from Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
“The three expert teams have conducted an in-depth epidemiological investigation and worked in tandem in the process of analyzing the infection monitoring data and the findings,” the Israeli government said.
The findings in Israel come on the heels of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s announcement that it was investigating the “relatively few” cases of myocarditis in young adults who received shots of one of two available mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. The agency has not found a link between the two as the investigation is still in its early stages.
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Pfizer maintained that the vaccine has not been shown to be responsible for the cases of cardiac inflammation, according to Bloomberg.
“A careful assessment of the reports is ongoing and it has not been concluded,” the company told Bloomberg. “Adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, are being regularly and thoroughly reviewed by the companies as well as by regulatory authorities.”
Meanwhile, the vaccine has just recently been authorized for use in children 12 to 15 in Europe, about two weeks after U.S. regulators did the same. Israel had held off making the Pfizer vaccine available to children 12 to 15, pending the Health Ministry’s report. The government is still deliberating whether to make children eligible for the shots but said it “shall issue a public update once a decision has been made.”
