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Headache appears to be initial symptom of vaccine blood clotting events --CDC official

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Headache appears to be the main symptom among the six women who developed blood clots after receiving a Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, vaccine safety lead with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Covid-19 Response Team, said during a meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday.

"The important thing to note here is the initial features are largely kind of nonspecific symptoms, which at initial presentation – or when a patient starts to become symptomatic – may seem kind of mild and not that clinically significant. Things like headaches, lethargy, chills, myalgia," Shimabukuro said. "Later features include severe headache, some focal signs, in one case severe abdominal pain, bruising, swelling in the lower extremities."

Shimabukuro referred to the six cases and said that "if you look at five of these six cases, really headache is the initial presenting feature and so I do think it's important in the setting where we are right now that health care providers maintain a high index of suspicion for possible CVST and confirm vaccination history among other things."

CVST refers to cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, which involves clotting in veins that drain blood from the brain. Shimabukuro noted that four of the six patients were treated with the anticoagulant drug heparin, but heparin is not the recommended treatment for this particular type of rare blood clot, which is accompanied by a low level of a blood clotting cell known as platelets. Heparin is a blood thinner and giving it to people with low platelet counts could cause hemorrhaging.

Among the six patients, Shimabukuro said that one has died, three remain hospitalized -- among which two are in intensive care, and two have been discharged home. ...

 

 

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