Some children who experienced heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination had scarring on their hearts months later, a new long-term study found.
Researchers followed a group of 40 patients aged 12 to 18 for up to one year after the children were diagnosed with myocarditis, or heart inflammation, following vaccination with one of the messenger RNA vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna. They performed a series of tests, including echocardiograms.
Cardiac MRIs were performed on 39 of the 40 patients. Abnormal results came in for 26 of those who were imaged, including 19 who had late gadolinium enhancement, or signs of scarring.
The patients with abnormal results returned for follow-up cardiac MRIs at least five months after the initial tests and 15, or 58 percent, had residual late gadolinium enhancement (LGE). The one patient without an initial scan also had mild late gadolinium enhancement when scanned during a follow-up visit.
“Persistence of LGE in a significant subset of patients with up to 1 year of follow-up was observed,” Dr. Yiu-fai Cheung, with Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, and the other researchers wrote.
They said the implications of the persistence remain unclear but that given it’s an indicator of subclinical heart dysfunction and scarring, “there exists a potential long-term effect on exercise capacity and cardiac functional reserve during stress.”
The study was published by Circulation. The authors reported no funding or disclosures.
Dr. Peter McCullough, an American cardiologist and president of the McCullough Foundation, said the new data is consistent with what cardiologists are seeing in clinical practice.
“Serious cases of COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis are not resolved by cardiac MRI at one year of followup in the majority of cases. At some point, we must assume that late gadolinium enhancement represents a scar or permanent damage,” Dr. McCullough, who wasn’t involved in the research, told The Epoch Times via email.
“COVID-19 vaccines should be pulled from the market immediately until further notice. Large-scale research programs should be commissioned immediately on subclinical and clinical COVID-19 vaccine induced myocarditis with initial aims at risk stratification and mitigation for cardiac arrest.”
