Researchers think they’ve figured out why the COVID vaccine causes heart inflammation in an extremely small number of teenage boys — and what might be done to avoid it.
The second dose of COVID vaccine appears to promote a severe inflammatory response in these teens, setting off a cascade of events that causes myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), the researchers reported.
Such a reaction probably can be avoided by allowing more time between the first and second doses, noted senior researcher Carrie Lucas, an associate professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Conn.
