Could COVID-19 Vaccines Cause Antiphospholipid Syndrome?

Syndrome, known also by his birth name Buddy Pine and Incrediboy, is the main antagonist of the Pixar movie, The Incredibles, which was released theatrically in the United States on November 5, 2004. Screenshot from the movie.

Antiphospholipid syndrome is an autoimmune disorder characterized by repeated episodes of blood clots in the veins or arteries or recurrent fetal losses.

Antiphospholipid syndrome can also cause multi-organ failure.

If COVID-19 vaccines trigger antiphospholipid syndrome, even rarely, this is a potentially very serious—sometimes lethal—vaccine adverse event.

What does “antiphospholipid” mean?

Phospholipids are interesting molecules.

They have a hydrophilic (water-attracting) end and a hydrophobic (water-repelling) end. This structure makes phospholipids crucial components of cell membranes.

Water molecules are polar, meaning they have a negatively charged section and a positively charged section. 

The water-attracting end of a phospholipid is also electrically charged. The water-repelling end of the molecule is electrically neutral because the charge is balanced.

These kinds of molecules tend to form “bilayers,” two sheets of molecules lined up with the water-attracting ends facing out and the neutral ends facing in.

This turns out to be an extremely helpful structure for keeping cell contents inside and other things outside.

Antibodies, as you already know, are molecules made by the immune system to bind with and neutralize proteins that the body tags as foreign.

You can probably already see the problem with “antiphospholipid antibodies.”

These are antibodies that will attack and possibly destroy cell membranes, the body’s own cell membranes.

The body attacking itself

You might recognize antiphospholipid syndrome, then, as an autoimmune condition.

Autoimmune conditions, as you know if you’ve been reading my work, can be triggered by vaccination (especially with aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines, but that’s a discussion for another day).

In May of 2021, Cytokine and Growth Factor Reviews, a peer-reviewed journal owned by Elsevier, published a paper from Italian researcher Rosetta Talotta and University of Pennsylvania scientist Erle Robertson.

They asked whether antiphospholipid antibodies and the risk of post-COVID-19 vaccination thrombophilia would be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” The camel being universal COVID vaccination.

The paper discusses the type 1 interferon response that can be triggered by mRNA vaccines.

This response is associated with—guess what?—the generation of antiphospholipid antibodies.

This type 1 interferon response also suppresses the innate immune response and is further linked to unusually fast growing cancers.

In a carefully worded sentence that departs from the mainstream scientific consensus, these two well respected and well-educated scientists argue that antiphospholipid antibodies “may represent a risk factor for thrombotic events following COVID-19 vaccination, and deserve further investigations.”

A case report of vaccine-induced antiphospholipid syndrome

Eleven months later, Dr. Eduardo J. Balbona, M.D., published a preprint in April of 2022: “Case of COVID mRNA Vaccine Linked Antiphospholipid Syndrome.”

Balbona is an internist who practices medicine in Jacksonville, Florida.

Balbona’s preprint reports on a 22-year-old male who received an mRNA COVID vaccine.

This patient subsequently suffered “a large pulmonary embolus requiring hospitalization.”

In other words, the young man had a blood clot blocking an artery in his lungs, a life-threatening situation.

In the preprint, Balbona notes there have been “several” reports of “thrombotic events” after receipt of COVID vaccines.

Thrombotic events are blood clots that can lead to serious outcomes like stroke or cardiac arrest.

And he’s right.

In fact, as of August 30, 2024, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System had nearly 12,000 reports with “thrombosis” or “thrombotic” in the symptom description.

Moreover, a Research Letter accepted by the European Respiratory Journal in April of 2021, a year before Balbona’s preprint was published, discussed the European reporting rates of thrombotic events of various types of COVID vaccines.

Several European countries had temporarily suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine following reports of thrombotic events, but the authors (from France and Sweden) made it clear that thrombotic events had been reported with both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA-based vaccines as well.

What’s more, the authors “noticed thrombocytopenia associated with thrombotic events and/or disseminated intravascular coagulation and/or antiphospholipids antibodies for all three vaccines.” [My emphasis.]

However, the researchers pointed out that they could not determine true incidence from the reporting rates, in part because adverse event reporting systems like VAERS and VigiBase are notorious for underreporting.

Catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome

A team of six Spanish scientists have also reported a catastrophic case of antiphospholipid syndrome triggered by mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

This time in a 27-year-old woman.

The patient was hospitalized 36 hours after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

Though in this case they were able to save her life in the ICU, the authors’ key message is that “mRNA COVID-19 vaccine can trigger CAPS in APS patients.”

But that’s not all.

Patient, 35, hospitalized with acute heart failure five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine

In July of 2022, three doctors from Royal Oak, Michigan, published a “Suspected COVID-19 Immunization-Induced Probable Catastrophic Antiphospholipid Syndrome” in Cureus.

This peer-reviewed article describes a 35-year-old woman with a prior history of antiphospholipid syndrome who was hospitalized with acute heart failure five days after receiving one dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

Her heart failure was thought to be “due to small vessel thrombosis secondary to antiphospholipid syndrome.” [My emphasis.]

Antiphospholipid antibodies can also be triggered, as Balbona points out, by COVID-19 and other infections.

So, it can be hard to tease out exactly what triggered the autoimmunity, especially now when so many people have had both COVID itself and one or several of the COVID vaccines that were supposed to prevent infection.

But COVID infection normally induces the production of antibodies against the nucleocapsid portion of the virus, and vaccination does not.

In his clinical practice, Balbona had the foresight to test his young patient for these antibodies against the nucleocapsid.

And, as he notes in his case report, the patient tested negative for those antibodies, which proves that he didn’t had a COVID infection prior to becoming ill.

In other words, Balbona showed definitively that the young man’s devastating autoimmune condition, antiphospholipid syndrome, was caused by the mRNA vaccine.

An expression of concern?

That preprint was made available to the scientific community and the reading public in April 2022.

Nearly two years later, in March of 2024, Research Square, an open-access scientific preprint platform, issued an “editorial note” to caution readers about Balbona’s case report.

Let’s pull the camera back for a minute and look at the bigger picture.

Preprint platforms are a relatively new phenomenon in the world of science.

They enable scientists to get their research out to the scientific community in electronic form faster than traditional publication in scientific journals.

Preprints are not generally peer-reviewed. Which means that they have not been reviewed by an anonymous panel of three, or sometimes more, experts in the field.

While many preprints are later published in peer-reviewed journals, that is not a given.

The editorial note that was added to Balbona’s “Case of COVID mRNA Vaccine Linked Antiphospholipid Syndrome,” is in bright red font.

“We emphasize the need for cautious interpretation”

Editorial notes are intended to “provide important context regarding the topic of a preprint or to alert readers to potential issues concerning that preprint or a downstream publication associated with it,” according to Research Square.

This note, labeled an “Expression of Concern,” says the following:

The case report, while addressing a potentially significant health issue, is notably brief and lacks detailed clinical data, making its claims about the negative effects of mRNA vaccines on insufficient grounds. The potential for misinterpretation of these findings, especially in the current global context, is high and could lead to public health concerns. The paper has not undergone formal peer review, which is vital for ensuring the reliability of medical research. We emphasize the need for cautious interpretation of these preliminary findings and recommend further research and peer-reviewed studies for more conclusive evidence.

Okay. Fair enough. The case report is “notably brief” and does lack “detailed clinical data,” two points that are obvious to anyone who actually reads it.

The entire case report, in fact, is just one page long.

And, yes, it has “not undergone formal peer review.” A valid point as well. But, again, the fact that it is a preprint should make that obvious.

No, the interesting thing about the note is why someone at Research Square felt the need to post it in the first place.

After all, the case report itself was originally posted in April of 2022. As we’ve seen, it adds to a growing body of peer-reviewed literature linking antiphospholipid syndrome to COVID-19 vaccines, some of which had already been published at that time Balbona’s preprint appeared.

So, what makes this one-page write-up so worrisome that it requires an “expression of concern” slapped on it in red ink, two years after it was published on the internet?

According to the Mayo Clinic, signs and symptoms of antiphospholipid syndrome can include:

• Blood clots in legs (aka deep vein thrombosis). When these clots travel to the lungs, they can cause pulmonary embolisms.

• Repeated miscarriages or stillbirths

• Strokes. A stroke can occur in a young person who has antiphospholipid syndrome but no known risk factors for cardiovascular diseases.

• Heart problems. Antiphospholipid syndrome can damage heart valves.

• Thrombocytopenia. This decrease in platelets, the blood cells needed for clotting, can cause bleeding, particularly from the nose and gums. Bleeding into the skin will appear as patches of small red spots.

Could it be that Balbona has definitive clinical evidence of a case of antiphospholipid syndrome caused by the mRNA vaccines? And that he has inadvertently discovered the mechanism to explain why so many vaccinated young adults are dying of heart attacks and strokes?

Yesterday, September 12, 2024, the Surgeon General of the State of Florida issued a press release recommending against the use of mRNA vaccines this fall and winter.

It’s heartening to see that researchers and medical doctors in Florida are putting people over profits.

May the other 49 states follow suit.  

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About the author:

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist and book author. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine. A lively and engaging speaker, she has lectured about vaccine safety, informed consent, and medical malfeasance to audiences around the world. Support her work by becoming a paid subscriber to Vibrant Life today. Zoey O’Toole contributed research and reporting for this article.