Rome, 11 June 2021 – After the death of Camilla Canepa, the 18 year old vaccinated with AstraZeneca and hospitalized in Genoa after a cavernous sinus thrombosis, let’s try to clarify thrombocytopenia, the autoimmune disease the girl suffered from.
When symptoms such as a headache oppressive, nausea, numbness, and a type of phenomenology is suspected thrombotic, it can arrive in desperate cases in intensive care. As in the case of Camilla, the doctors, as a last resort, try in extremis the removal of the clot, and maneuvers to reduce the intracranial pressure that is determined, otherwise the brain suffers from intracranial hypertension up to the extreme consequences.
Suffering, therefore, of Familial autoimmune thrombocytopenia and taking hormone treatment, Camilla had to be left alone, or alternatively treated with a mRna vaccine, as he suffered from a rare autoimmune disease affecting platelets, hence blood clotting. That is why in these cases it is reviewing the opportunity to vaccinate young women of childbearing age and in general young adults of both sexes with live attenuated virus vaccines (also Johnson & Johnson single-dose belongs to this group, in addition to AstraZeneca). We are talking about very valid life-saving vaccines, however authorized for everyone and practiced on millions of individuals, and which thus save tens of thousands of human lives from the Sars-Cov2 syndrome, which involves interstitial pneumonia, cardiomyopathies, thrombosis at the level of the capillaries, and resentments in many other organs and systems. What is being done, strengthened by current experience, is to ensure that people who are otherwise exposed to remote risk are protected against Covid with the right vaccine, even if only one case out of 100 thousand. The debate on the possibility of administering one therefore remains open different dose to those who received the first dose of AstraZeneca, i.e. to continue the vaccination course with another mRna product.
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Familial autoimmune thrombocytopenia
But what is the familial autoimmune thrombocytopenia? Thrombocytopenia is defined as a clinical condition characterized by a reduction in the number of platelets in the blood peripheral venous. In familial autoimmune cases, mechanisms occur whereby antibodies target against platelets, and these mechanisms are passed on to offspring. When a vaccine is administered, the immune defenses are solicited, which in this case produced damage to the intracranial venous network which was then lethal, in these cases we speak of iatrogenic damage, i.e. damage caused not by the original disease but by the therapy. These are very rare events, they are a price to pay in the battle against the pandemic, but the health and regulatory authorities are working to avoid even these undesirable side effects.
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What are platelets
Platelets (also called thrombocytes) are corpuscular components of the blood, therefore derived from cells, pieces of a mosaic that play an important role in the cascade mechanisms of blood coagulation together with coagulation enzymes. Their function is stop bleeding in wounds (hemostasis). They are present in the circulating blood for 70% and in the spleen for the remaining 30%. They have an average survival of 10 days.
What are the causes of low platelets?
The causes of thrombocytopenia can be linked to reduced production for various causes (infiltration of the bone marrow by tumors, bone marrow aplasia, infections, vitamin B12 or folic acid deficiency, for myelodysplastic syndromes). Alternatively, thrombocytopenias can occur due to increased destruction of platelets, for immunological causes (autoantibodies). In many other cases we can have thrombocytopenia, from increased consumption of platelets for DIC, disseminated intravascular coagulation, or for a abnormal functioning of the spleen.
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Hereditary platelet disorders
Platelet disorders can be hereditary, resulting from genetic alterations (so-called mutations) that are transmitted from parents to children. Hereditary thrombocytopenia can be corrected with a bone marrow transplant, other times an attempt is made to make up for it with hormonal therapies. The transplant has so far been used successfully in many cases of Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and congenital amegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia, as well as in a limited number of particularly severe cases of Bernard-Soulier syndrome.
Cavernous sinus thrombosis and Covid vaccine
We asked the professor Sergio Coccheri to explain to us the mechanism that comes into play after vaccination with AstraZeneca. “The most usual and almost banal vaccination disorders, such as fever, fatigue, headache, dizziness, joint pain – explained the professor, former professor of cardiovascular diseases at the University of Bologna – are generally common to all types of vaccine Only some types of adverse effects instead they are specific to a particular type of vaccine. Sometimes, the adverse effect resembles, perhaps with some variations, the disease you want to prevent. A typical example of this eventuality was the appearance of very rare cases of motor disturbances in children vaccinated against polio. For cases like these it seems appropriate to suspect a causal relationship between vaccination and adverse effect “.
A similar situation has recently occurred with the appearance of cases with an evident thrombotic component, explains the specialist, after the administration of two types of anti-Covid vaccines quite similar to each other (Astra Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson). It is a particular type of thrombosis, associated with the production of antibodies against blood platelets (involved in haemostasis), with consequent coexistence of thrombosis and haemorrhages, in unusual locations. This very rare anomalous reaction has been called VITT (Vaccination Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia). It is an abnormal thrombosis, but still a thrombosis.
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