New research has been released examining the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and its association with blood clotting, an issue that became a significant concern during the vaccine's rollout. Many people were apprehensive about the potential side effects, impacting their willingness to receive the vaccine. ABC science journalist Tegan Taylor will delve into the details of this research, providing insights and explanations about the findings and their implications for public health.
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00:00 Well, what they noticed, and you might remember at the time of the vaccine rollout, that there
00:06 was this concern, as you say, about a real but very rare blood clotting disorder that
00:12 was happening in some people who had AstraZeneca. And in recent years, they've noticed that
00:16 a similar condition seemed to happen in some people after they had a common cold virus,
00:21 just a normal infection. And they've compared the two and realised that they are effectively
00:27 the identical condition. And the reason for that is because of something called an adenovirus.
00:34 So an adenovirus is a type of virus that causes the common cold, there's lots and lots of
00:38 them. And there's also chimpanzees can also get adenoviruses, there's different type of
00:44 virus. And it's a chimp adenovirus that was actually in the AstraZeneca vaccine, as the
00:49 way of smuggling the COVID genetic material into our bodies for our bodies to mount the
00:55 immune response. It's a really cool way of getting that genetic information in there.
01:00 But it did seem to trigger this rare autoimmune disease. And so what they've noticed is that
01:07 the antibody that attacks the person's own body that happened in the reaction to the
01:14 AstraZeneca vaccine, the same as what is happening when they see this happening in rare cases
01:19 with adenovirus infections kind of in the wild in humans. And it involves a protein
01:25 in your body called platelet factor four. So it affects your blood's ability to clot.
01:31 And the reason why this is really useful that they've been able to look at the molecular
01:34 level and see that it's the same thing means that they can help people who have the illness
01:40 for starters. It also has implications for how we create vaccines as to whether maybe
01:46 adenoviruses are a good carrier for this sort of thing. And because it's an autoimmune reaction,
01:54 they can also perhaps use it as a way of understanding more about autoimmune diseases like lupus.
01:59 So it really unlocks a lot of potential opportunities to discuss this further.
02:05 So all the worries that some people had about the AstraZeneca vaccine founded?
02:10 Yeah, well, I mean, I think at the time, I know that there was a lot of talk about misinformation
02:15 about vaccine harms. This wasn't misinformation at the time. And it was reported on by the
02:21 ABC, among others, about the fact that this was a real but rare side effect from the AstraZeneca
02:27 vaccine. In a way, it's not a pressing issue for us anymore, because AstraZeneca is no
02:33 longer in Australia. We've got other vaccines on the market now and AstraZeneca has been
02:38 removed. So there's no concerns with COVID vaccines that are currently on the market
02:42 in Australia. It's more that it's a little bit more insight into something that we already
02:47 identified had happened with this particular vaccine back in the early parts of the pandemic.
02:53 And relief to change the topic, relief for some peanut allergy sufferers, Teagan, could
02:58 be as simple as outgrowing the allergy.
03:02 If you're one of the lucky ones. So there is this idea that you know that some kids
03:06 do seem to outgrow food allergies and others don't. And we've never really understood why
03:10 or been able to predict why. But some researchers at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute
03:17 have been looking at this, looking at the numbers of kids who have various allergies
03:21 across Australia and looking at which ones seem to outgrow their peanut allergies specifically
03:27 and if there's any way of identifying how. And it turns out that about a third of children
03:32 outgrow their peanut allergy by about age 10. It's probably actually earlier than that.
03:38 And they've been able to identify two different types of immunoglobulin. It's a complicated
03:45 thing but basically it's a marker that they can see in the blood of these kids and depending
03:50 on which direction these two antibodies are going in the blood, they can predict perhaps
03:55 which ones are going to outgrow their peanut allergy. Lucky them. And which ones aren't.
04:02 And so that can help in time if this can become the sort of test that's done routinely by
04:07 allergists because it's only just been discovered. It might be the sort of thing that they can
04:11 use to prioritise which kids get different kinds of interventions, different kinds of
04:16 treatments and perhaps warning those families that those kids are going to need to be really
04:21 vigilant all the way through their lives versus the ones that are probably going to get safer
04:25 and safer and eventually not have to worry about peanuts.
04:28 More on the health report later today at three o'clock Eastern on the RN. Tegan, thanks so
04:34 much.
04:35 Thanks, Ros.
04:36 Thanks.
04:36 Thanks.
04:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]