ice9 Profile picture
I do quantitative things. Sometimes I think about society and economics.

Sep 9, 2020, 7 tweets

Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine trials paused for review after a serious adverse event.

statnews.com/2020/09/08/ast…

Appears to have been a spinal inflammatory condition, most often observed as an autoimmune symptom following a viral infection. Timing and details unclear.

Antibody formation is a randomized process.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26860/

Lymphocytes producing self-reactive antibodies are normally eliminated in the spleen and bone marrow.

mdpi.com/2073-4468/3/1/…

However, this screening, known as central and peripheral tolerance, is not always successful.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_t…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periphera…

Transverse myelitis can be associated with antibodies binding e.g. aquaporin-4 (used by astrocytes; this form often also affects optic nerve), myelin-oligodendrocyte glycoproteins, etc.

Rare in tissues in which tolerance is tested-- highlights a key limitation in the mechanism.

Partial recovery from transverse myelitis typically takes several months to a year, and may require costly interventions.

Full recovery is uncommon.

mayoclinic.org/diseases-condi…

I ran a few tests.

Apparently one case in a sample of n≈30000 is enough to reach statistical significance against the annual base rate for TM, but not the incidence rate of e.g. GBS (more common, couldn't find TM) for influenza vaccination.

Pardon the restructuring of the thread. This format is not conducive to working through a problem in real time. I needed to correct a copy-paste error that affected the second result. Overall results are not yet available, so we should know more about the risk profile then.

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