mRNA Vaccine Caused Multiple Sclerosis in Case Report: Putting Things in Perspective

Damaged myelin sheath of neurons involved in multiple sclerosis.Photo byfreepik.com.

The claim that a new paper from the World Health Organization (WHO) showing that mRNA vaccines caused multiple sclerosis is going viral on Twitter, garnering millions of views in less than a week (Figure 1).

Multiple sclerosis is the most common disabling neurological disorder in young individuals. It happens when the immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin sheath that wraps around neurons, serving as an insulator to allow the transmission of electrical nerve signals.

Although multiple sclerosis is rarely fatal, it’s incurable and inflicts disabling symptoms of fatigue, vision loss, muscle spasms and stiffness, mobility limitations, neuropathic pain, and cognitive impairments, among others. Multiple sclerosis isn’t something you want to live with.

So, is there any scientific validity in such an alarming claim? Honestly, yes, the paper is scientifically sound, but it’s actually a case report of only two cases. Let’s dissect what the new paper shows, amidst the misleading claims out there, and what it means for mRNA vaccine safety.

Figure 1. Snapshots of tweets going viral on Twitter, following the keyword ‘multiple sclerosis’, as of 31st May 2023.Photo byTwitter.

What the study did and found

The study was not formally published (yet) but was presented as a poster at a conference held by the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS), a non-profit and independent organization, in 2022. Poster presentations typically serve as early sharing of scientific findings, which may be published later.

And no, the paper was neither published nor endorsed by the WHO. It was merely indexed in the WHO COVID-19 Research Database.

The study authors Qiu et al. from the University Hospital of Zürich, Switzerland, reported two cases of multiple sclerosis occurring shortly after mRNA vaccination. As the last author, Roland Marin, a professor of neurology and neuroimmunology, and a world-leading expert in multiple sclerosis research, likely directed the study.

What’s innovative is that Qiu et al. isolated spike protein-activated T-cells from the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of the two patients with post-mRNA vaccine multiple sclerosis. They then screened such activated T-cells against a range of multiple sclerosis-related proteins. They found that such activated T-cells also reacted with myelin sheath proteins, namely:

• myelin basic protein (MBP)
• myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG), and
• proteolipid protein (PLP).

To confirm that the T-cells were spike protein-activated, Qiu et al. further showed that such T-cells could bind to both spike proteins and myelin sheath proteins in a separate lab dish. In this lab dish, pro-inflammatory molecules were also detected, further confirming the T-cells were activated (as unactivated T-cells won’t mediate an inflammatory response).

Molecular mimicry likely explains the cross-reactivity between spike and myelin sheath proteins. This isn’t surprising as molecular mimicry is a known pathogenesis driving multiple sclerosis. Molecular mimicry occurs when peptides of foreign particles (like a virus) share molecular similarity with peptides of the host’s own cells. Activated immune cells targeting the foreign peptides may thus target their own cells too.

Putting things in perspective

But the controversial case study of Qiu et al. does have limitations. Despite proving the biological plausibility of spike protein being capable of causing multiple sclerosis via cross-reactive T-cells, the paper did not prove that the spike protein originated from the mRNA vaccine.

Sure, the close timeframe from mRNA vaccination to multiple sclerosis development suggests the vaccine is the culprit. But SARS-CoV-2 tests were not performed to rule out possible infection. If the patients turned out to be SARS-CoV-2-positive, then we can’t be sure if the T-cells were activated by the vaccine’s or the virus’s spike protein.

To the enthusiasm of anti-vaccine groups, a few case studies have been published on the development of multiple sclerosis after Covid-19 vaccination. But authors of these case studies admit that their cases might be a product of coincidence and causality can’t be inferred. Only the case study by Qiu et al. provided concrete evidence for the biological plausibility of mRNA vaccines causing multiple sclerosis.

Still, a case study is a case study, which is the lowest tier of scientific evidence. Case studies are not easily replicated, with results not generalizable to the general population. Case studies do not have control groups, so we can’t determine if mRNA vaccination actually increases the incidence of multiple sclerosis compared to no vaccination.

In large-scale cohort studies with control groups, no increased risk of demyelinating events has been found after mRNA vaccination. For example, in a 2021 cohort study of >30 million people, no significant association was present between Covid-19 vaccines (AstraZeneca’s DNA or Pfizer’s mRNA) and demyelinating events. But SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a 1.7-fold increased risk of demyelinating events. (Multiple sclerosis is the most common form of demyelinating disease.)

A 2022 study on VigiBase, the WHO pharmacovigilance database, identified 15,616 neurological adverse events after vaccination with Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, of which only one event was multiple sclerosis. This gives the rate of 0.006%, using neurological adverse events as the denominator.

But the proper denominator should be the number of vaccine doses, which would lower the rate by a hundred or thousand times that it likely becomes negligible. It’s unfortunate that the study neither employed a control group nor mentioned the total number of vaccine doses received.

I’m dumbfounded

Funny enough, the tweet that started the narrative of mRNA vaccines causing multiple sclerosis — which garnered nearly 2 million views in less than a week — used my scientific paper as support (Figure 2).

Figure 2. A snapshot of the tweet misusing my paper.Photo byTwitter.

The image is taken from my 2021 paper, “Persistent Brainstem Dysfunction in Long-COVID: A Hypothesis,” published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience (Figure 3). In this paper, I proposed that brainstem dysfunction may be involved in long-Covid pathophysiology by drawing on autopsy studies and brainstem physiology.

The tweeter has a popular substack newsletter, where my paper was misused as evidence that the spike protein causes brainstem demyelination, which somehow leads to multiple sclerosis.

But the case study of Qiu et al. identified cross-reactive T-cells that target myelin sheath proteins as the biological mechanism driving post-mRNA vaccine multiple sclerosis. The brainstem wasn’t even involved.

Even I’m baffled at how my paper about brainstem and long-Covid can be linked to mRNA vaccine and multiple sclerosis. The biological plausibility here is implausible beyond comprehension. And I’m more speechless that so many people believe the tweet and substack newsletter.

Figure 3. A snapshot of my own academic paper.Photo byYong (2021).