No End to the Complexities of SARS-CoV-2

"It's certainly much higher than what we would expect."

"[However, in the case of COVID-19], we are dealing with an inflammatory process that is secondary to infection."

"You would have to assume that if you got COVID and then three days later, you start to get symptoms of ATM, that the link is there."

"[In general, those who suffered severe ATM [acute transverse myelitis] may never recover fully."

"The short answer is we don't know [whether the vaccines could -- via a mechanism called molecular mimicry whee the injected foreign substances may resemble something in the body -- trigger an immune reaction damaging the body's cells]."

"One case per million people who received the vaccine, that would be a normal situation, but here, three cases in 22,000 people [test group in the vaccine trials] is too much."

Dr.Gustavo Roman, neurology expert, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas

Researchers linked covid-19 to a rare spinal disorder called acute transverse myelitis. Photo by Getty Images

The existence of a link between COVID-19 and a rare spinal disorder capable of causing paralysis and quadriplegia has been suggested in a new scientific review. Adults and a few children in several countries have been affected by that disorder where researchers in the United States and in Panama discovered 43 cases of acute transverse myelitis (ATM) among a global total of 86 million COVID-19 cases in 21 countries they are convinced is linked to a previous COVID-19 infection.

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Of those cases three were found in trials to test the AstraZeneca vaccine. One of those three cases, researchers feel, may be directly linked to the vaccine itself. After reviewing all previously published scientific literature on ATM with the use of search terms to find mention of the neurological condition, with any conceivable connection to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the researchers felt convinced that one exists. 

An inflammation of the spinal cord, which is what acute transverse myelitis is, is a rare condition; in any year it normally occurs in about 1.36 to 4.6 cases for every million people. Between March 2020 and January 2021, however 43 reported cases of ATM linked to COVID-19 infection, were found to have occurred in a diverse range of countries; the United States, Belgium, India, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, Indonesia, Panama, Moldova and Switzerland.

 

Iran had the highest incidence rate at seven cases among all nations, followed by Italy and the United States, each reporting six cases. When the search ended in January of this year, close to 86 million cases of COVID-19 had been assessed globally and scientists used that number to calculate the rate at which the condition occurred among COVID-19 patients to be a minimum of 0.5 cases per 1 million people. A rate that could be higherm taking into account the number of ATM/COVID-linked cases that might be unreported.

The condition can develop from a host of factors, from infections, external or internal trauma, internal blockages, a family history of neurological disorders like multiple sclerosis, reactions within the body's immune system, and in some instances, even vaccines. the condition could be caused by the virus directly attacking the spinal cord or by mimicking components of the body's own immune system gone amok to trigger a self-attack, the review posits.

The 43 cases reported in the review represented 23 men and 20 women, ranging from three to 73 years of age. The condition appeared between ten days to six weeks following the observation of COVID symptoms in 68 percent of the cases. This, according to the review, could indicate "post neurological complications mediated by the host's response to the virus." Diagnosed with ATM, patients can experience symptoms like body pain, sensitivity, muscle weakness, loss of bladder control and in severe cases, partial or total paralysis.

The review highlighted 58 percent of the patients showing tetraparesis, where an individual's four limbs suffer muscle weakness, along with total paralysis of the arms and legs. Predicting whether ATM could develop in someone who has COVID-19, is difficult: "Probably a predisposition in your genes [where] you tend to respond to or attack the nervous system in your body because of whatever your genes are", offered Dr. Roman.

Three of the 43 cases reported in the review had been found through vaccine trials testing efficacy and safety in Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom, of the AstraZeneca vaccine, leaving researchers to suspect the vaccine may have been the cause of ATM development in at least one of the cases, while the other two were dismissed once one was found in a person given a different vaccine, part of a control group. The other was of a person with an undiagnosed history of multiple sclerosis.

While the review and its conclusion results are uncommon, there have been a number of vaccines that have on occasion induced ATM and they were vaccines for polio, influenza, rabies, measles, hepatitis B, and rubella. The AstraZeneca vaccine incorporates a chimpanzee adenovirus carrying the COVID-19 antigen into the body's immune system which "may induce immune mechanisms leading to the myelitis", states the review int he online journal Frontiers in Immunology.

AstraZeneca offices in Cambridge, England. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)