Risk of myocarditis and pericarditis following BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 COVID-19 vaccinations

  1. Samantha Ip
  2. Fatemeh Torabi
  3. Spiros Denaxas
  4. Ashley Akbari
  5. Hoda Abbasizanjani
  6. Rochelle Knight
  7. Jennifer Cooper
  8. Rachel Denholm
  9. Spencer Keene
  10. Thomas Bolton
  11. Sam Hollings
  12. Efosa Omigie
  13. Teri-Louise North
  14. Arun Karthikeyan Suseeladevi
  15. Emanuele Di Angelantonio
  16. Kamlesh Khunti
  17. Jonathan A C Sterne
  18. Cathie Sudlow
  19. William Whiteley
  20. Angela Wood
  21. Venexia Walker

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Abstract

We describe our analyses of data from over 49.7 million people in England, representing near-complete coverage of the relevant population, to assess the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis following BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 COVID-19 vaccination. A self-controlled case series (SCCS) design has previously reported increased risk of myocarditis after first ChAdOx1, BNT162b2, and mRNA-1273 dose and after second doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in England. Here, we use a cohort design to estimate hazard ratios for hospitalised or fatal myocarditis/pericarditis after first and second doses of BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 vaccinations. SCCS and cohort designs are subject to different assumptions and biases and therefore provide the opportunity for triangulation of evidence. In contrast to the findings from the SCCS approach previously reported for England, we found evidence for lower incidence of hospitalised or fatal myocarditis/pericarditis after first ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 vaccination, as well as little evidence to suggest higher incidence of these events after second dose of either vaccination.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.06.21267462: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.03.06.21267462 on medRxiv