World's largest study in COVID vaccine side-effects | ABC News

Intro the results are written from the world's largest study into the side effects of covid vaccines the study involved almost 100 million people from eight countries for more we're joined by the host of the Health Report on RN Dr Norman swam Norman great to see you again now what What have we learned have we learned from this study that's been highly anticipated well just you alluded to the scope of it 99 million people 183 million doses of vaccines looking at Astra Mna and fisa and they've done it in eight countries with very reliable data places like Australia New Zealand Canada Denmark Finland um and the results show that well first of all the uncovered side of side effects that they hadn't quite expected and they did show up as a signal there all the side effects were rare and it takes me a little bit just to explain the um you the data because what they were doing was they were saying look what's the base rate of these problems in the community and what's the rise above the base R how many cases would we have expected over this period of time in this group of people and then how many cases appeared and uh what they showed was that they were rare so they start and and they only chose significant side effects if they were confident that they were side effects so gon Barry syndrome is one that been talked about a lot you and I have talked about it on the virus on news channel and the um so this is an ascending paralysis of the body a bit like um well it's not really like multiple sclerosis but it it it affects the ne the nervous system usually in most people it's a temporary phenomenon although it can be quite serious at the time gon bar seem to be only a problem Side effects with the Astro vaccine rare but only with the Astro vaccine not with the MRNA vaccines myocarditis pericarditis inflammation of the heart that showed out is a significant side effect um and no surprises there with the MRNA vaccines then there was a side effect called acute disseminated enom myelitis so this is essentially a brain inflammation usually seen in children but in this case in older people these are largely 20 to 60y olds um and again in most people self-limiting but could can be quite nasty but to give you an idea of how and it was only with the modna vaccine they didn't see it with fizer and they didn't see it with Astra How rare is it so out of 10 million doses of Astro 1 million well I think yeah 10 million doses of of Mna I should say they were they expected to see two cases in that population of this brain inflammation and they saw seven so it's you can see how rare it is but it needs more investigation so out of that cohort of 99 million participants who were the subject of this study how many people came out with side effects um I've been asked this question before in terms of how many people if you just take the brain inflammation yeah out of 99 million people seven because this was I mean the whole yeah but the thing about side effects is that a lot of people around the world were wondering what if I'm one of the seven right but proportionality is really really important here that's right so it's vanishingly rare but it does exist and it's it's all about transparency so that you know what the risks are and this would be like winning the biggest lot um three times in your life something like that as we mentioned this was uh eight countries was a scope how much can that be extrapolated to the rest of the world population are recipients of these vaccines it's a it's a good question because you might well get different genetic susceptibilities in different populations but um the uh in terms of a representative population for Australia the the um you know particularly Canada was heavily involved it's a very similar population to australas I think Australians can take it away that from their point of view it's gives a good understanding of the risk of side effects I want to turn now to another study this time into a type of blood fat blood fat that's been Blood fat and heart disease linked with heart disease and stroke tell me about that we all know about cholesterol and if you've thought about cholesterol you've heard about there's good cholesterol and bad cherol right bad cholesterol is called LDL and uh that's the one that they target to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke and so on it's been known for a long time that on the side here there's another Blood fat it's not part of cholesterol separate blood fat and it goes by the name lipoprotein little a CU there's a little a next to it the way the the experts um describe it and it's been known for a while that LP little a increases the risk of heart attack and stroke but it's but cardiologist have been trying to find all sorts of reasons why they shouldn't measure it one of the reasons is that they haven't got effective treatments for it it turns out and it's just getting stronger and stronger and stronger that LP little a is a strong risk factor for heart attacks and strokes in its own right and we should have it should be measured in people who are at high risk cuz there are ways of bringing it down and reducing your risk and there are new treatments on the horizon and it's as poent in terms of heart attack and stroke as LDL cholesterol how do you get about working out if you are at high risk or not you get a simple blood test trouble that easy yeah it's that easy trouble is it's not re reimbursed at the moment so it will cost you anywhere between 25 and 50 bucks right Norman great to chat with you thank you so much for coming in not at all