Suspicions grow that nanoparticles in Pfizer vaccine trigger allergic reactions | Hacker News Reader

Suspicions grow that nanoparticles in Pfizer vaccine trigger allergic reactions

sciencemag.org

105 pointslongdefeat98 comments

Honestly I’m kinda unnerved that this clear clickbait has made it to the front page of HN. 6 out 272k people experienced this reaction.

Given the recent accusations levered against foreign powers for amplifying fake news in the US, I can’t help but wonder if this story has similarly sinister origins.

Also amusing that the HN title omitted the word "rare" from the title of the original article (and is the only change). Can't help but feel there was a specific intent behind that decision.

Perhaps low key subtle competition between vaccine manufacturers? At least 5 in play, more coming soon, lots at stake

Flag the story.

I don't understand whats wrong with this article. It seems well balanced with many sources and it even ends with representatives from BioNTech getting the last words saying that the risk are minuscules and wont outweigh the benefits?

Nothing wrong with the article. The title was manipulated and baity.

There isn't anything wrong. There is a lot of toxicity on HN and users with the ability of downvoting will more often than not abuse it to support their personal agendas.

The ominous sounding "personal agenda", also known as "my opinion" :-))

Excellent point. I’ve forgotten I have this civic power.

Add the 500,000 in the UK that have had the pfizer vaccine in the last 3 weeks.

8/750,000 = 0.00106%

"Honestly I’m kinda unnerved that this clear clickbait has made it to the front page of HN. 6 out 272k people experienced this reaction."

Only X amount of Y population feel the consequences of contracting C19. Most of us have been perfectly fine. So what is your point?

Let's compare and contrast, shall we?

M (where M is very small) out of N (where N is very large) people have experienced an allergic reaction due to the vaccine (allergic reactions can be bad, but are generally manageable).

X (where is is somewhat small) out of Y (where N is not super large) have died contracting C19.

Another Z (which is small, but not as small as X) out of Y are facing long term consequences contracting C19 (and these consequences are more severe than an allergic reaction in many cases).

So, which one is the intellectually disingenuous argument?

most as in 99% is three orders of magnitude worse than most as in 99.997%.

This is a non-news story and worse is designed to alarm the headline-reading, TLDRing average American. Encouraging more people to “delay” getting the vaccine until “the bugs have been worked out”.

I’m revolted to find that here when I expect to find this shit on /r/news.

Every single news "article" has been designed that way since Mar 2020 and yet a surprising amount of people with questionable intellectual capacity have endorsed the news, including the self-proclaimed intellectual elite of HN.

Supporting a piece of information only when it aligns with your views and opinions is not very rational and objective, is it? It's playing double-standards or just being a hypocrite.

To say that this should be disregarded because it only affects a small amount of people is like saying C19 should be disregarded because it only affects a small amount of people. I guess drawing parallels doesn't work well with majority.

So this shit is gonna make it to the top of all news sites without and statistical qualification. What a surprise.

The use of the term "nanoparticle", is going to freak people out when PEG (polyethylene glycol) is one of the most used substances in the world.

Yeah PEG allergies are a nonstory. That said, actual nanoparticles should usually give people pause. Nanotoxicity is a poorly understood subject that only recently started getting some of the attention it deserves. Usually, when people talk about nanoparticles in context, they're made up of rigid or semi-rigid structures (which PEG is not) that can turn into asbestos-like carcinogens after a little wear and tear.

How can it be a nonstory when the experts in the article are so divided? One said they had to stop trails with PEG drugs because someone died, and another says they are not the cause of allergic reactions at all, while a third says yes they are but they are triggered by different antibodies. Seems like we actually don't know much about this at all then?

A cursory look at the literature [1] shows five confirmed recent cases of PEG allergy. PEG is used all over the place: taken internally in several OTC laxatives, applied externally in cosmetics and personal lubricant, vaporized and inhaled in electronic cigarettes, and as a solvent in many industrial processes. If PEG allergies were a serious concern, it would have risen about the noise floor a long time ago since it causes an acute reaction.

It's definitely not worth stopping clinical trials for five total confirmed cases in the medical literature, especially if those trials target a global emergency like COVID. For comparison: you'd get at least five confirmed cases of peanut allergies just by spraying down a single decent sized elementary school with peanut dust.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221321982...

> It's definitely not worth stopping clinical trials

Did anyone suggest this?

Exactly - the conspiracy crowd are going to stir up theories of nanobots!

There are charlatans making a lot of money selling conspiracy theory content.

“Teutonic Vaccine Syndrome”

I'm surprised that high-profile AAAS/Science has made a relatively big deal out of this story due to heightened sensitivities surrounding the vaccine and the fact that anti-vaxxers are looking at anything and everything to criticize the vaccination program.

I'm the last one to advocate censorship, especially so with regards to science reporting, but this article may have been better presented as a small sub-article or news footnote (that is, unless there's serious merit to the story). Please note, I'm not advocating censorship here, I am in fact advocating the story receive commensurately fewer column inches in line with what it actually deserves.

What is particularly worrying about the PEG matter is that it won't take long for the naysayers to try to associate it with its mate of similar name [sans 'poly'] — I'm not even game to mention it for fear of it being indexed, etc. No doubt, however, others will and that'll be and unwanted setback.

A lot more educated people here to disprove those theories and reduce misinformation on other platforms by readers here.

Censoring this article will give the anti-vaxx crowd all the ammo they want.

Are you happy now? It's a shame people don't actually read what is written!

What’s the point of this comment? Plenty of people unironically believe the earth is flat.

It's not very commonly used internally, however.

It sure is, as it's on the GRAS list. I used it as an inert carrier in an injectable drug I worked on a decade ago and everyone else on the project had used it in other projects before.

It's a polymer so is synthesized and then separated into different molecular weights. I believe that only some of which are actually GRAS. I don't know about the tiny chains discussed here.

Actually it is the main component of many (very successful) drug delivery systems.

If I remember this well It's one of 2 main components of electronic cig liquid. Not sure what the chemical reaction does to it when it turn into vapour though.

This is correct, the other is glycerine ("VG"). PEG ("PG") is also used in food by the way. And yeah as far as I know nobody knows what the "vaping" process does yet.

Oh yes it is. Polyethylene glycol is sold widely as Miralax! Half the people in my own household use it regularly to...well, stay regular.

> Half the people in my own household use it regularly to...well, stay regular.

Do they have a medical condition or old age? Or just don't eat enough vegetables and fibre?

Depending on the family member(s), it’s autism and mild developmental delays with their commonly-associated GI issues and lowered gut motility (and semi-inflexible eating patterns leading to a not-very-balanced diet), and/or good old “Jewish tummy” which while technically not in the DSM is still super-common with its associated constant GI issues and a bunch of relatives on both sides of the family who have developed full-blown IBS and/or Crohn’s disease.

This vaccine rollout will have post-approval surveillance - detailed tracking of side effects, sent back to the FDA and CDC for monitoring. Surprisingly, this is not required of all drugs, but it is considered one of the most effective ways of really tracking down such issues. It provides some compromise between the "keep doing a million more trials until every possible concern is wiped out, even if people are dying waiting for this drug" and "just throw it out there and cross your fingers" polar opposites that many worry about. Nice to see! https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772137

"at least 8 people", later 6 cases in 272,001. Or 0.002% vs 0.1% of the US population dead [1], let alone infect or suffering long term injury due to covid.

I don't know about you, but given a allergic reaction being 50x less likely that dying, I'll take the vaccine.

[1] 316k dead (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k...) vs 330 million total population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...) == 0.1% of the population dead by covid.

"Pfizer’s and Moderna’s clinical trials of the vaccines, which involved tens of thousands of people, did not find serious adverse events caused by the vaccine. But both studies excluded people with a history of allergies to components of the COVID-19 vaccines; Pfizer also excluded those who previously had a severe adverse reaction from any vaccine. People with previous allergic reactions to food or drugs were not excluded, but may have been underrepresented."

Is this the regular procedure for vaccines clinical trials?

You can start with any group. After a successful study, you have a product for this specific group.

Afterwards you can broaden the group having enough money for a more detailed study.

Yes, young and strong, male (to avoid risk of pregnancy)

This is a gross overstatement.

They excluded a very tiny part of the population (my guess is under 0.1%), nowadays you cant find a material that no one is allergic to.

The question GP answered was whether this was normal procedure for vaccine trials, not what happened during this particular one.

Pfitzer and Moderna vaccines were tested on both males and females.

That's a problem, it seems. Covid is mostly lethal among older population. Those people take a lot of various drugs. And it looks like that particular population was avoided during trials. Various allergies are also widespread these days. If the vaccine is only for very healthy 30 years old who typically does not have any covid symptoms then what's the point?

Another thing is lack of information how vaccine affects fertility. Probably it does not, but not testing it causes the spread of craziest conspiracy theories.

One more problem was really small trial group. It sounds like it was huge - 140K in case of Pfizer vaccine - however only less than 200 people were diagnosed covid, 95% of them were in placebo group, which proves that vaccine works, the question is how strong this proof is.

It doesnt have to be a perfect wall against the virus. We need to move to herd immunity and get the r score down.

https://xkcd.com/2400/

The data is really convincing even with only around 200 cases. I linked the XKCD comic, but the real data actually looks like that. It doesn't matter much if it is 90% or 95% effective, which might be hard to distinguish with this number of cases. But it is easy to say that the vaccine works in general, even without detailed statistics.

And more importantly, for the question of safety the whole trial with more than 40,000 people matters, and that is a very large trial.

> If the vaccine is only for very healthy 30 years old who typically does not have any covid symptoms then what's the point?

Obviously the point is to vaccinate that group. You cannot seriously be suggesting that at this point, in the middle of a global pandemic, a vaccination is not valuable unless it covers 100% of the population. Right now even a vaccine that would only work for 1% would a a useful improvement over status quo where no-one is immune except previously infected. That said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will work for a much much larger part of the population and potentially allow us to reach herd immunity even if a small part of at risk individuals will not be able to take it. That will be a huge benefit to those people even if they don’t get vaccinated themselves.

"Some allergists and immunologists believe a small number of people previously exposed to PEG may have high levels of antibodies against PEG, putting them at risk of an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine."

That would explain the second follow up shot causing more issues than the first.

What does "previously exposed" mean in this context? Looking at its list of uses[1], literally almost the entire population of the planet has been exposed in some way or other.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_glycol

I'm no expert but one would assume if you wore makeup everyday a small amount of people would get a high enough dose for the body to respond.

They use use this chemical in drugs, later down in the article is describes a drug trial using this chemical were some people got sick. Maybe people who entered the trial do this often, like joey from friends.

My underground things need to be "inside" for the body to start a immune response. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(16)30605-4/pdf 'The strong association of IgG antiPEG antibodies with severe allergic reactions is consistent with the growing interest in IgG-mediated anaphylaxis'. However, the study relates to a very specific version of the polymer.

Those 6 out of 272k people, who exhibited allergic reaction to the vaccine, do they have allergic reaction to the common products like toothpaste and shampoo as well? I did not find that information in the article, but feels like it should be a no-brainer question to ask.

I think two of the people who reacted in the UK carried Epi-pens. So, yes.

Those are probably for food allergies, not allergies to cosmetics.

I wonder if they can titrate the dose a bit to limit the scale of the reaction. Or just do a reaction test to PEG before dosing.

In the UK, according to the released documentation, recipients are monitored for allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) for several minutes after receiving the first dose and staff are trained to react quickly. Anyone with a reaction to the first dose won't be given the second.

This is correct, here in the UK everyone is observed for 15 minutes after receiving the first dose.

I read that the 15 minute observation requirement is causing various GPs to turn down the work because they don’t have that kind of time. Presumably it was never expected for all GPs to accept the work but I wonder how widespread it is and what impact it’ll have on the bigger goal.

The GP shouldn't be affected by the observation period at all. Patients just sit in a waiting area after receiving the shot. At least that's the way it worked for me with a different medication.

You typically need to sit in an area where you are under constant monitoring and can receive immediate medical intervention if symptoms of anaphylactic shock start to surface. My GP doesn’t have such a place in their office, so you sit in the room with a nurse in the hallway monitoring 2-3 rooms.

Just try coughing lightly in this scenario and watch every nurse within earshot reflexively spin their head in your direction.

This has also been confirmed for Norway, but is already standard for most vaccinations. Some minor short term reaction is common.

I’d be curious about this as well. I was on a medication previously that had a rare chance of causing Stevens-Johnson syndrome (very severe rash with other possible complications). I did some research on it, and the standard approach for the medication is to titrate patients up slowly, and if anyone has a serious reaction they back off to a lower dose and “rechallenge” with a good success rate.

Not sure if something like that is possible with the vaccine and patients who have an allergic reaction but I’d be curious to find out if a similar approach of “rechallenging” would work.

My wife had the anaphylactic reaction to doxil they mentioned in the article. I didn’t know the details but they said it was the ’carrier’ causing the reaction.

They just started titrating the dose in the future and it was fine. They still watched her like a hawk though.

Poland will soon start vaccinating its population along with rest of the EU; govt site reports that 5 formulas will be purchased along with the information that there's going to be a fund for people with adverse vaccine reactions. Tho, no details how this would work is described atm.

I'm bit curious how handling different formulas will work in the reality.

Is there a timeline?

Last time I checked it said it would take almost a year to vaccinate the high risk group, let alone the rest of the population, which would mean I might be able to get my shot in 2022 if I'm lucky.

A year to vaccinate the high risk group sounds way overblown. Maybe it's taking into account people who won't accept it right away?

The vaccine is being rationed because of high demand. The moment demand drops, it no longer makes sense to ration it the same way.

Also keep in mind that distribution speed will increase over time as procedures and protocols are put in place and learned by everyone.

I suspect the majority of people who want to be vaccinated in europe will have their shot by september 2021. This is all off napkin math though.

Thanks, this puts my mind at ease a bit.

The social media hysteria when someone dies is going to be unbearable. And no, I don't think the vaccine is dangerous, but if you vaccinate 100 million people in a short time frame, something bad is ordinarily going to happen. Ex: "My 97-year old Uncle Bob took the vaccine and all I know is 3 days later he died of heart failure."

As anecdotes like this inevitably pile up, we're going to really regret all the "long Covid" coverage.

Slavoj Zizek[0] a few months ago correctly predicted it'll get much worse with anti vax conspiracies, once the first person (in good public standing[1]) publicly faints or has some other bad reaction (fake or not) and that it will cause lots of conspiracies.

[0] sadly I can't find the video/source

[1] last case of somebody fainting was a nurse. probably doesn't matter what "public standing", but it gives people not understanding cause-effect further validation of their insane-hypothesis

She apparently had that reaction before and it's quite common.

I can well believe that. When I was in my early 20s, I fainted when I was given a tetanus booster in hospital after getting a relatively nasty cut which needed stitches. I'm not in the slightest bit scared of needles/etc, hadn't lost much blood or skipped meals and was a fit and healthy young man. The nurse at the time told me it was very common and why they stayed for 5 minutes or so after giving me the injection. I've had a fair few other injections since then and not had it happen again.

Why on earth would you put a fainting-prone nurse on TV when you're trying to convince everyone the vaccine is safe?

Yes, that wasn't the smartest thing. Also not of her to not raise this point beforehand.

I believe this is both true and irrelevant. The claim is that conspiracies will be birthed, not that the vaccine is actually dangerous.

They will be regardless. But that's no reason to increase that.

What about the Oxford vaccine? Does that have these PEGs?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com