AstraZeneca: Researchers race to understand why handful of patients develop blot clots

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Wed, 2021-04-07 10:07 — mike kraft

Europe’s vaccine divide: As scientists scramble for answers to AstraZeneca blood clot puzzle, some nations opt for caution The cases of brain clots remain very rare. That is just one challenge for researchers. Loveday Morris Washington Post

BERLIN — For 18 hours a day, Andreas Greinacher and his team at Germany's Greifswald University Hospital have pored over blood samples from across Germany and Austria.

Their mission: Trying to figure out how and why potentially deadly blood clots have appeared in a handful of patients who received AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine.

No link has been established with the vaccine, widely used in Europe and other countries, including Canada and India, and under review for possible approval in the United States.

But several teams of hematologists, including Greinacher’s, say that an overactive immune response appears to be triggering the rare clotting condition in some patients, leading to new treatment guidelines in Europe.

So scientists are scrambling to map patients’ genes and examine medical histories of those sickened for any clues about what might make one person more susceptible than another — and whether anything other than the vaccine might be at play.

“This is looking for the needle in the haystack,” Greinacher told reporters last week, explaining that any constellation of risk factors, not present in 99.9 percent of the population, could be to blame.

The question of how to balance dueling concerns — rising cases and a rare but potentially serious side effect — has split regulators and experts.

Britain has moved forward with vaccinations for all age groups, continuing its backing of the homegrown vaccine, developed jointly by the Swedish-British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

France, Germany, Sweden and Canada are among those restricting its use in younger people, while Denmark and Norway have maintained a complete pause.

AstraZeneca has said that “patient safety remains the company’s highest priority” and points to the fact that no relationship has been found between the vaccine and blood clots by British or European regulators. ...

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