A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday shows there is no evidence that mRNA coronavirus vaccines cause fatal cardiac arrest or other deadly heart conditions in teens and young adults. There is.

Since the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved in late 2020, anti-vaccination groups in the United States have claimed they were responsible for fatal heart problems in young athletes.

One of the most notorious examples of vaccine misinformation concerns Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, 26, who collapsed on Monday Night Football as a result of cardiac arrest in 2023. . Hamlin was resuscitated on the field and eventually recovered. He returned to play for the Bills last season.

“When Damar Hamlin fell, we immediately received comments that it could be vaccine-related,” said study co-author Dr. Paul Cieslak, medical director of infectious diseases and immunization at the Oregon Health Authority’s Division of Public Health. said. “This is kind of what we were trying to address with this analysis.”

The new report’s findings include nearly 1,300 death certificates for Oregon residents ages 16 to 30 who died of any heart disease or unknown cause between June 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022. This is what was obtained from the analysis. One million teens and young adults in the state have received the COVID-19 vaccine, the authors write.

The authors focused on people who received the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and died within 100 days of vaccination.

Of the 40 deaths among people who received the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, three occurred within that period.

Two of the deaths were attributed to chronic underlying health conditions.

The third death was recorded as a “death of unconfirmed natural causes” and toxicology tests returned negative results for alcohol, cannabis, methamphetamine and other illegal drugs.

The coroner could not confirm or rule out COVID-19 vaccination as the cause of death. However, none of the death certificates showed that the cause of death was the vaccine.

Although it remains unclear whether the vaccine caused the third death, Cieslak said analysis showed that 30 people died from coronavirus in the period, the majority of whom were not vaccinated. He pointed out.

“When you’re balancing risks and benefits, you have to take that into consideration and say, ‘I should bet on the vaccine,'” he said.

Dr. Leslie Cooper, chief of cardiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved in the study, said the researchers were actually “pretty generous” in their analysis, noting that they were unable to do so within the first 100 days of the study. He added that it was a long period of time. Vaccinations were massive.

“They went above and beyond to capture the possibility of cardiac death from vaccination,” he said.

Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops beating and pumping blood to other parts of the body. This is different from a heart attack, which occurs when blood flow to the heart muscle is restricted or blocked, and myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle.

In people under 35, the cause of cardiac arrest is often unknown. It may be the result of a genetic defect or heart malfunction, such as a problem with the heart valves.

Professor Cooper added that the analysis shows that the risk of sudden death in young people after vaccination is significantly lower than the risk of sudden cardiac death from any cause, even over a long period of time. He estimates 100,000 people a year.

He said the data shows “there is no indication that there is an increase in cardiac deaths associated with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.” “Their conclusions are very reasonable.”

Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccine Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, said no vaccine has ever been definitively linked to sudden cardiac death.

Although the mRNA vaccine is said to carry a low risk of myocarditis, the heart condition tends to be much milder than that typically seen with traditional myocarditis caused by COVID-19 infection, and most people experience it for several days. He added that he will make a full recovery within the next few days.

“This adds to the evidence that people do not die from mRNA Covid-19 vaccines,” Professor Levy said of the study.