| Photo: EFE/EPA/STEPHANIE LECOCQ / POOL
The inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis) and the lining of the heart (pericarditis) are known side effects of the mRNA vaccine. These cases seem to occur at a very low frequency of a few tens per million vaccinated, but there is a suspicion that in young men they could be more frequent. On social networks, skeptics about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine have collected cases of athletes with chest pain and incapacitated by symptoms of cardiac inflammation. But a new study, precisely with athletes, suggests that COVID itself 20 may be blamed for myocarditis in them.
The Doctor. Jean Jeudy, professor and radiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine at Baltimore, collected 1.380 MRI scans of the heart at a congress of athletes called the Big Ten. Thirty-seven of these athletes (2.3%) were diagnosed with Covid-associated myocarditis-16. Half of them had no symptoms and only discovered the problem because of an MRI scan—other cardiac tests revealed no abnormality. This test was seven times more sensitive to detect myocarditis than other methods. The long-term effect is unknown, some of these patients had scar tissue left by the inflammation on the heart muscle. Myocarditis is responsible for almost 20% of athlete deaths from sudden illness.
