Organ transplant patients are going into organ rejection post covid vaccine

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/11/15/4500

This is heartbreaking.  I spent 5 years of my career working in a critical care/ICU unit that was not only a Medical ICU but also a transplant ICU.  Livers and kidneys primarily.  We had several organ donors that donated corneas, and I did have a few patients who received cornea transplants during my time on the unit.  Watching what someone has to go through before any kind of transplant, taking anti-rejection meds for the rest of their life, and constantly monitoring for rejection is an anxious and fearful existence.  To have something injected into them that CAUSED an organ to reject is sickening.

Corneal allograft transplantation is the most frequently performed organ transplant procedure worldwide The cornea is one of the few organs with an immune privilege and, thus, a decreased rate of allograft rejection.  However, in April 2021, two cases of acute corneal rejection after Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) with a possible association with COVID-19 vaccination were reported.  In addition, several reports have previously described corneal allograft rejection being triggered by vaccinations, including those secondary to Influenza and Hepatitis B vaccine administration.  These reports have raised concerns among ophthalmologists as future booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines are being discussed, which may impact outcomes in future corneal allograft recipients.  Thus, we must recognize the clinical features, risk factors, and course of allograft rejection, as well as currently known data on post-rejection rescue attempts. This information will help to establish effective care and preventive measures against allograft rejection in future corneal transplant recipients with a history of recent COVID-19 vaccination or for those planning COVID-19 vaccination.

Thirteen articles reported four types of vaccines that were administered, including BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech, eight [38.1%] cases); mRNA-1273 (Moderna, eight [38.1%] cases); ChAdOx1 (University of Oxford/AstraZeneca, four [19.0%] cases); and CoronaVac (Sinovac Biotech, Beijing, China; one [4.8%] case).  Approximately 66.7% of these patients received the first vaccine dose, whereas 33.3% received the second vaccine dose.  So tally time: 21 corneal rejections with these 4 covid injections.

Among these cases, the interval between corneal transplantation and rejection ranged from 14 days to 25 years (median: 2 years.   Someone had the corneal transplant be successful for TWENTY FIVE YEARS and then suddenly they went into rejection post vaccine???  The interval between COVID-19 vaccination and rejection ranged from 1 day to 6 weeks (mean, 10.4 days; median, 7 days).  So rejection occurred SUPER fast after they were vaccinated, despite how many years they had post transplant.  How many people were required to GET the damn injection JUST TO QUALIFY FOR TRANSPLANT?!?!? So disgusting.

Two of these patients (two eyes) underwent transplant > 20 years ago and had no history of acute or chronic corneal allograft rejection.  The long-term stability and temporariness of vaccination and allograft rejection suggest that immune responses to the vaccine may have played a role in transplant rejection. Two separate studies investigated the possibility of confounding viral infections, including herpes simplex and varicella-zoster viral infections, which are known risk factors for corneal allograft rejection.  However, PCR results for confounding viral infections were negative in both patients. Additionally, two cases (four eyes) of post corneal allograft rejection after vaccination were reported. These cases suggest a systemic inflammatory etiology for corneal graft rejection.  The detailed pathophysiology of the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and corneal allograft rejection remains unclear.

Corneal transplantation is associated with low rates of allograft rejection, probably due to ocular immune privilege.  This underscores the importance of recognizing the possibility of COVID-19 vaccine-led corneal allograft rejection in the 21 patients (23 eyes) included in the present study.  The concerns regarding vaccine-associated acute allograft rejection extend beyond the COVID-19 vaccines, especially those related to influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus, and yellow fever viral vaccines.  The incidence rate of vaccine-associated corneal graft rejection is certainly modest in terms of corneal transplant frequency. However, the projected societal shift towards a more frequent vaccination schedule calls for clinicians to be cognizant of a possible connection between the temporality of vaccine administration and graft rejections. Cell-mediated immune responses were confirmed in previous studies for the vaccine types included in this systematic review.

What other organs are experiencing rejection post covid injection?  What would the new bivalent covid injection do to someone who is immune compromised already due to anti-rejection meds and is unable to fight off the systemic inflammatory response they believe is responsible for the corneal rejections?  What are other organ rejection rates post covid injection?  I am going to go digging on that.