Soluble factors in COVID-19 mRNA vaccine-induced myocarditis causes cardiomyoblast hypertrophy and cell injury: a case report

• Published in: Virology journal Vol. 20; no. 1; p. 203
• Main Authors: Paredes-Vazquez, Jose Gildardo, Rubio-Infante, Nestor, Lopez-de la Garza, Hector, Brunck, Marion E G, Guajardo-Lozano, Jaime Alberto, Ramos, Martin R, Vazquez-Garza, Eduardo, Torre-Amione, Guillermo, Garcia-Rivas, Gerardo, Jerjes-Sanchez, Carlos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 03.09.2023; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Brain natriuretic peptide; Cardiotoxicity; Case Report; Case reports; Cell injury; Cell viability; Congestive heart failure; COVID-19; COVID-19 - prevention & control; COVID-19 mRNA vaccine; COVID-19 vaccines; COVID-19 Vaccines - adverse effects; Cytokines; Development and progression; Flow cytometry; Heart; Heart diseases; Humans; Hypertrophy; Inflammation; Medical equipment and supplies industry; Medical test kit industry; Messenger RNA; Monocyte chemoattractant protein 1; mRNA; mRNA Vaccines; Myocarditis; Myocarditis - etiology; Natriuretic peptides; Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; Physiological aspects; Risk factors; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Statistical analysis; Vaccination; Vaccine-induced myocarditis; Vaccines; United States; Mexico; United States > US; COVID-19; Inflammation; COVID-19 mRNA vaccine; Vaccine-induced myocarditis
• ISSN: 1743-422X; 1743-422X
• DOI: 10.1186/s12985-023-02120-0

Inflammation affecting the heart and surrounding tissues is a clinical condition recently reported following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. Assessing trends of these events related to immunization will improve vaccine safety surveillance and best practices for forthcoming vaccine campaigns. However, the causality is unknown, and the mechanisms associated with cardiac myocarditis are not understood. After the first dose, we reported an mRNA vaccine-induced perimyocarditis in a young patient with a history of recurrent myocardial inflammation episodes and progressive loss of cardiac performance. We tested this possible inflammatory cytokine-mediated cardiotoxicity after vaccination in the acute phase (ten days), and we found a significant elevation of MCP-1, IL-18, and IL-8 inflammatory mediators. Still, these cytokines decreased considerably at the recovery phase (42 days later). We used the cardiomyoblasts cell line to test the effect of serum on cell viability, observing that serum from the acute phase reduced the cell viability to 75%. We did not detect this toxicity in cells when we tested serum from the patient in the recovery phase. We also tested serum-induced hypertrophy, a phenomenon in myocarditis and heart failure. We found that acute phase-serum has hypertrophy effects, increasing 25% of the treated cardiac cells' surface and significantly increasing B-type natriuretic peptide. However, we did not observe the hypertrophic effect in the recovery phase or sera from healthy controls. Our results opened the possibility of the inflammatory cytokines or serum soluble mediators as key factors for vaccine-associated myocarditis. In this regard, identifying anti-inflammatory molecules that reduce inflammatory cytokines could help avoid vaccine-induced myocardial inflammation.