You may have heard about the viral abstract from the @AHAScience saying cardiac risks increase after Covid vax. Note- not everything the AHA produces is a well reviewed clinical practice guideline or meta-analysis. Lets think this through.
If you do a test looking for inflammation after a procedure designed to produce an immune response… you will find… inflammation. The results in the abstract do not mean what you think they do.
The author is a cardiac surgeon turned holistic health practitioner. He had a cohort of patients who had PULS blood tests pre vaccination done at baseline (probably in his clinic based upon the abstract). He got some patients vaccinated, and then he repeated the PULS afterwards.
The test itself is designed to predict who might have a vulnerable plaque, which is a major cause of heart attacks. The search for which plaques are vulnerable and which are more solid ***is a legitimate clinical mystery***. Its extension to vaccination is not legitimate.
The actual panel includes the things below, and a risk score is calculated.
There are several lessons here-
1. Laboratory tests, especially those taken outside the original testing parameters, do not directly equal clinical outcomes.
2. An abstract is the most basic level of science submission that can be sent to the AHA. There is very limited peer review.
3. Routinely ordering the PULS can be done in a Cardiology clinic but for now is not standard of care. We have formal clinical guidelines on how to reduce heart attack risk.
4. We do know the clinical issues that happen after Covid vaccines now, very very well. This type of study is superseded by large clinical studies such as those done by the CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink or Israeli MOH.
5. There was no effort to compare results with other adult vaccines such as pneumonia boosters or adult flu vaccines.
6. There was no effort at all to make a control group.
7. If you run a test designed to seek out inflammation after delivering a medicine designed to elicit inflammation, you will find inflammation. A test used outside of its normal parameters should be used with caution.
8. Keep on being inspired to learn how science research works. Read the actual articles themselves to figure them out.
With credits to a couple of other cardiologists for showing this - its important to look at his actual presentation slides. Here, he has no disclosures, but he still wants you to buy his products (which is a standard Conflict of Interest in any reputable journal):
He reports data exists on 566 patients but displays only 2 (such studies usually attempt to analyze the data in aggregate):
And in the conclusions he recommends quercetin and aspirin, which he does not have the data analysis to support (you would want to at least show your PULS numbers decrease with aspirin / quercetin). For all these reasons, interpret this abstract with caution.
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