May 27, 2021

expert reaction to preprint from Germany giving theory about why blood clots might rarely occur after vector-based COVID-19 vaccines

A preprint, an unpublished non-peer reviewed study, from researchers in Germany presents a theory for why vector-based COVID-19 vaccines, such as Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, may cause rare blood clots.

Prof Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology, University of Nottingham, said:

“It’s a really interesting hypothesis, that errant processing of the delivered spike gene results in the production of a truncated spike protein, which gets secreted from the cell, potentially triggering blood clotting events.

“The data certainly highlights that production of this truncated spike may well occur, but it stops short of providing a concrete link with promotion of blood clotting.  Nevertheless, it is certainly something worth investigating further.”

Preprint (not a paper): ‘“Vaccine-Induced Covid-19 Mimicry” Syndrome: Splice reactions within the SARS-CoV-2 Spike open reading frame result in Spike protein variants that may cause thromboembolic events in patients immunized with vector-based vaccines’ by Eric Kowarz et al.  This work is not peer-reviewed.

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-558954/v1

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Declared interests

Prof Jonathan Ball: “Receiving UKRI funding to develop DNA-based next-generation COVID19 vaccines.”