From WebMD.com….
Scientists in Germany say they’ve worked out the two-step mechanism by which the AstraZeneca vaccine causes rare but devastating blood clots that gobble up the body’s supply of platelets.
So far, European regulators have reported more than 220 cases of unusual blood clots and low levels of platelets in patients who received the vaccine, called Vaxzevria, which was developed with funding from the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program to spur development of a suite of vaccines to protect people from COVID-19. AstraZenecaThe AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been authorized for use in the United States.
“This is, in my opinion, rock-solid evidence,” said Andreas Greinacher, MD, head of the Institute of Immunology and Transfusion Medicine, University Hospital Greifswald, Germany, who was among the first scientists in the world to link the rare clots to antibodies against a key protein in platelets.
“This is what scientists usually think is confirmatory evidence,” he said in a call with reporters hours after publishing his study as a preprint ahead of peer review on the Research Square server.
