Some Children Had Seizures from COVID Shots, FDA-Backed Study Says
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Young children may suffer seizures and convulsions from taking Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID shots, an FDA-backed pre-print study claims.
A diverse team of scientists included data from commercial insurance databases Optum, Carelon Research and CVS Health, covering 4,102,106 American children between six months and 17 years old. In this age group, 26 million children out of a total 73 million have received the complete regimen of COVID injections.
The researchers selected 15 possible adverse health outcomes to measure. Two of these – myocarditis/pericarditis and seizures/convulsions returned statistically signified results. The former conditions were flagged in older children, between 12 and 1 – while the latter conditions occurred in children between 2 and 5 years old.
“In the primary analysis, myocarditis or pericarditis signals were detected following BNT162b2 vaccine in children aged 12-17 years old and seizures/convulsions signals were detected following vaccination with BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 in children aged 2-4/5 years,” the authors state.
There were a total of 72 observable cases of seizures and convulsions, some febrile, while 153 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis were identified.
“The myocarditis/pericarditis signal is consistent with peer-reviewed publication reports demonstrating an elevated risk of this outcome following mRNA vaccines among younger males aged 12 to 29 years.,” the authors state.
The study team asserts that the report is robust, but that more detailed investigation is necessary, especially into the seizures and convulsions.
“Our study detected a signal for myocarditis/pericarditis in older children which is consistent with existing literature, and a new signal for seizures/convulsions in young children that is being further evaluated in a more robust study. FDA concludes that the known and potential benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the known and potential risks of COVID-19 infection,” the authors write.