Young adults who received a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine showed elevated spike protein production a year or more after vaccination — that’s significantly longer than the spike protein was expected to remain in the body — a peer-reviewed study showed.
Source study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/iid3.70194
The study, published last week in Immunity, Inflammation and Disease, found that participants exhibited elevated levels of multiple proinflammatory cytokines — proteins that help regulate the immune system — signifying “the persistence of the humoral immune response to messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines.”
According to the study, “the persistent production of spike protein and highly inflammatory nature of mRNA-lipid nanoparticle” may account for the elevated cytokine levels.
Lipid nanoparticles are intended to deliver mRNA to human cells. But they’ve also been found to deliver DNA contaminants, contained within mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, throughout the body.
Study ‘raises important questions’ about long-term impact of COVID shots
“This study raises important questions about the long-term immunological imprinting of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in healthy young adults,” TrialSite News reported.
TrialSite News founder and CEO Daniel O’Connor said the study’s findings “highlight the urgent need for spike protein clearance and biodistribution studies — especially in young males and older adults — whose immune responses appear disproportionately affected.”
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said that while the study design — a longitudinal study of 84 people without a control group — “is not the strongest of designs,” he said the study nevertheless presents “evidence with strong implications.”
“Months- or even years-long production of spike protein has some really scary prospects, one of which is T-cell exhaustion,” Jablonowski said. This can result in a situation where the body cannot effectively fight viruses or cancer. “Persistent exposure to antigens will exhaust the T-cells and inhibit their natural function.”
Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher said the study’s findings “are not unexpected,” citing 130 peer-reviewed studies that have identified the persistent presence of spike protein in the human body.
Hulscher said long-term exposure to spike proteins may result in symptoms similar to those experienced by people diagnosed with long COVID.
A preprint by Yale University researchers published in February found that people thought to be experiencing long COVID may be suffering from post-vaccination syndrome. The study also showed that the spike protein from the COVID-19 vaccine persisted in the blood of at least one person 709 days after vaccination — a significantly longer time than previously measured.
Jablonowski noted that the study’s findings may also point to a broader safety signal that may be evident in COVID-19 vaccine injury data currently maintained in U.S. government databases.
“It warrants a larger retrospective controlled study, the data for which is mothballed by government or healthcare institutions,” Jablonowski said. “This kind of data is not kept forever. The window to preserve information on the harms of the COVID-19 injections is quickly closing.”
In an interview last month, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that HHS sub-agencies were selling patient information — presumably including vaccine injury information — to each other instead of making the information freely accessible.
During the same interview, Kennedy announced the launch of a new agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that will specialize in vaccine injuries.
‘Significant increase’ in cytokines linked to autoimmune disorders
According to the new study, a “significant increase in weight and body mass index was observed overall” among study participants, as were “significant increases” in “several cytokines.”
In an analysis published on Substack, Hulscher noted that the presence of the TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-4, IL-7 and IL-17E cytokines increased in study participants. These cytokines “are associated with chronic inflammation, immune dysregulation, and autoimmune activation.” These increases were “significantly greater” in males, the study authors said.
Increases were also observed in the VEGFA (angiogenesis), FGF2 and IFN-γ cytokines, linked to “vascular remodeling, tissue repair, and persistent immune activation,” and the MCP-1 and MCP-3 cytokines, “associated with chronic inflammation, vascular remodeling, and autoimmunity.”
The study showed that the presence of the macrophage colony-stimulating factor cytokine decreased. This could be a sign of immune system dysregulation, Hulscher wrote.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for CHD, said, “It is a little difficult to tell regarding the increase in cytokines in young adults because they also experienced the greatest increase in overall weight and BMI within the study. Obesity goes hand-in-hand with inflammation.”
“However, even the increases in the cohort of older adults considered alone is concerning and this needs a larger, more comprehensive study using retrospective data from the pandemic,” Hooker said. That data “should be made publicly available as soon as possible for independent analysis.”
According to the study, the persistence of spike protein in the body is fueled by the presence of mRNA and pro-inflammatory lipid nanoparticles. Jablonowski compared this to the impact of medical treatments such as chemotherapy on the human body.
“There are few medical treatments that increase cytokine proinflammatory markers months after administration. Adjuvant chemotherapy is one of them, a therapy specifically designed to kill tissue,” Jablonowski said.
Jablonowski also suggested that self-amplifying mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — recently approved in Japan and the European Union — could exacerbate the presence of spike proteins in the body.
“The cytokine markers described in the paper are a clear sign the immune system is in duress. If persistent production of spike protein is the, or a contributory, cause of this duress, the self-amplifying COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, just approved in Japan and Europe, will amplify that duress.”
Hooker said that the presence of spike protein can also lead to a range of other health risks.
“Increased inflammation leads to so many different conditions associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, including cardiac sequelae and turbo cancers. This definitely contributes to the body of literature supporting a complete withdrawal of all COVID-19 vaccines on the market,” Hooker said.
“As yet another study reveals grave harms linked to the COVID-19 mRNA injections, the case for their immediate removal from the market grows stronger and more urgent,” Hulscher wrote.
A growing number of scientific papers — and scientists — have called for mRNA products to be pulled from the market. A petition by several scientists, still pending before the FDA, calls for the suspension or withdrawal of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Some U.S. states and communities are also considering a ban.
