- A computationally designed antigen eliciting broad humoral responses against SARS-CoV-2 and related sarbecoviruses Nature.com
- How are SARS-CoV-2 variants outsmarting our immune system and vaccines? News-Medical.Net
- Host range, transmissibility and antigenicity of a pangolin coronavirus Nature.com
- The power of nanobodies: How they impact COVID-19 immune response News-Medical.Net
- Baseline gut microbiota and metabolome predict durable immunogenicity to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines | Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy Nature.com
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: responses
Macrophage ACE2 is necessary for SARS-CoV-2 replication and subsequent cytokine responses that restrict continued virion release – Science
- Macrophage ACE2 is necessary for SARS-CoV-2 replication and subsequent cytokine responses that restrict continued virion release Science
- Study reveals survival time of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater: Implications for public health News-Medical.Net
- Phase-separated nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 suppresses cGAS-DNA recognition by disrupting cGAS-G3BP1 complex | Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy Nature.com
- COVID-19 and Placental Infection: Are Fetal Survivors at Risk of Long-Term Cardiovascular Complications? Cureus
- A rapid and affordable in vitro model to test SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility in animal species News-Medical.Net
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Silence and delay vs. communication and drive — a look at the differences between police responses in Uvalde and Nashville – CNN
- Silence and delay vs. communication and drive — a look at the differences between police responses in Uvalde and Nashville CNN
- Nashville cops who shot Audrey Hale are Marine vet and ‘precision policeman’ New York Post
- Nashville shooting: Uvalde Foundation to honor officers who killed school shooter | LiveNOW from FOX LiveNOW from FOX
- Covenant School Shooting: Sister of officer who stopped shooter says ‘proud is probably an understatement’ WKRN News 2
- Central Kentucky law enforcement compares police response in Nashville to Uvalde LEX 18 News – Lexington, KY
Age-dependent impairment in antibody responses elicited by a homologous CoronaVac booster dose – Science
- Age-dependent impairment in antibody responses elicited by a homologous CoronaVac booster dose Science
- Lipid nanoparticles (LNP) induce activation and maturation of antigen presenting cells in young and aged individuals | Communications Biology Nature.com
- Bivalent and monovalent mRNA boosters induce similar antibody response against Omicron subvariants News-Medical.Net
- Reassuring Findings on Bivalent COVID Booster in Hemodialysis Patients Medpage Today
- Immunologic Effect of Bivalent mRNA Booster in Patients Undergoing Hemodialysis | NEJM nejm.org
- View Full Coverage on Google News
North Korea fires missile, vows ‘fiercer’ responses to U.S., allies
SEOUL, Nov 17 (Reuters) – North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Thursday as it warned of “fiercer military responses” to U.S. efforts to boost its security presence in the region with its allies, saying Washington is taking a “gamble it will regret”.
South Korea’s military said the ballistic missile was launched from the North’s east coast city of Wonsan at 10:48 a.m. (0248 GMT). It was the latest in a record number of such tests this year, and the North also fired hundreds of artillery shells into the sea more recently as South Korea and the United States staged exercises, some of which involved Japan.
The launch came less than two hours after North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, slammed a recent trilateral summit between the United States, South Korea and Japan, during which the leaders criticised Pyongyang’s weapons tests and pledged greater security cooperation.
At the talks, U.S. President Joe Biden reaffirmed a commitment to reinforce extended deterrence and defend the two Asian allies with a “full range of capabilities”, including nuclear weapons.
Choe said the three countries’ “war drills for aggression” failed to rein in the North but would rather bring a “more serious, realistic and inevitable threat” upon themselves.
“The keener the U.S. is on the ‘bolstered offer of extended deterrence’ to its allies and the more they intensify provocative and bluffing military activities … the fiercer the DPRK’s military counteraction will be,” Choe said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
She referred to her country by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The U.S. will be well aware that it is gambling, for which it will certainly regret,” Choe added.
A spokesman for South Korea’s defence ministry said the trilateral summit and their cooperation on extended deterrence are aimed at countering the North’s nuclear and missile threats.
The United States has been saying since May that North Korea is preparing to conduct its first nuclear test since 2017, but its actual timing remains unclear.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo said in a joint statement after the summit that Pyongyang’s nuclear testing would incur a “strong and resolute response.”
Choe said the North’s military activities are “legitimate and just counteractions” to the U.S.-led drills.
South Korea’s Unification Minister Kwon Young-se, who handles intra-Korea affairs, said the North might postpone its nuclear test for some time, citing China’s domestic political schedule.
“North Korea has also achieved some political effects by codifying its nuclear law in August, so it might not have immediate needs for a nuclear test,” Kwon said in an interview with Yonhap news agency released on Thursday.
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Soo-hyang Choi; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Lincoln Feast and Gerry Doyle
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Breathing May Measurably Modulate Neural Responses Across Brain
Summary: Study reveals a potential link between respiration and neural activity changes in animal models.
Source: Penn State
Mental health practitioners and meditation gurus have long credited intentional breathing with the ability to induce inner calm, but scientists do not fully understand how the brain is involved in the process.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electrophysiology, researchers in the Penn State College of Engineering identified a potential link between respiration and neural activity changes in rats.
Their results were made available online ahead of publication in eLife. The researchers used simultaneous multi-modal techniques to clear the noise typically associated with brain imaging and pinpoint where breathing regulated neural activity.
“There are roughly a million papers published on fMRI—a non-invasive imaging technique that allows researchers to examine brain activity in real time,” said Nanyin Zhang, founding director of the Penn State Center for Neurotechnology in Mental Health Research and professor of biomedical engineering.
“Imaging researchers used to believe that respiration is a non-neural physiological artifact, like a heartbeat or body movement, in fMRI imaging. Our paper introduces the idea that respiration has a neural component: It affects the fMRI signal by modulating neural activity.”
By scanning the brainwaves of rodents in a resting state under anesthesia using fMRI, researchers revealed a network of brain regions involved in respiration.
“Breathing is a need common to almost all living animals,” Zhang said. “We know breathing is controlled by a region in the brainstem. But we did not have a complete picture of how other regions in the brain are impacted by respiration.”
In tandem with fMRI, the researchers used neuronal electrophysiology, which measures electrical properties and signals in the nervous system, to link breathing with neural activity in the cingulate cortex—a brain region in the center of the cerebral hemisphere associated with emotional response and regulation.
Using fMRI and electrophysiology simultaneously allowed researchers to tease out non-neural related fMRI signal changes during data collection, such as movement and carbon dioxide exhalations.
The findings provide insight on how neural activity and fMRI signals are linked at the resting state, Zhang said, which could inform future imaging research on understanding how neurovascular signals change while at rest.
“As the animals breathed, we measured how their brain activity fluctuated with their breathing rhythm,” Zhang said. “When extended to humans, this approach could provide mechanistic insights into how breathing control common to meditation practices may help reduce stress and anxiety.”
The correlation between neural activity in the cingulate cortex and breathing rhythm may indicate that breathing rhythms may impact emotional state, according to Zhang.
“When we are in an anxious state, often our breathing speeds up,” Zhang said. “In response, we sometimes take a deep breath. Or when we are focusing, we tend to hold our breath. Those are signs that breathing can impact our brain function. Breathing allows us to control our emotions, for example, when we need our brain function to alter. Our findings support that idea.”
Future studies may focus on observing the brain in human subjects while they are meditating to analyze the more direct connection between slow, intentional breathing and neural activity, according to Zhang.
“Our understanding of what is happening in the brain is still superficial,” Zhang said. “If researchers replicate the study on humans using the same techniques, they might be able to explain how meditation modulates neural activity in the brain.”
About this neuroscience research news
Author: Mariah Chuprinski
Source: Penn State
Contact: Mariah Chuprinski – Penn State
Image: The image is in the public domain
See also
Original Research: Open access.
“Neural underpinning of a respiration-associated resting-state fMRI network” by Wenyu Tu et al. eLife
Abstract
Neural underpinning of a respiration-associated resting-state fMRI network
Respiration can induce motion and CO2 fluctuation during resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) scans, which will lead to non-neural artifacts in the rsfMRI signal. In the meantime, as a crucial physiologic process, respiration can directly drive neural activity change in the brain, and may thereby modulate the rsfMRI signal.
Nonetheless, this potential neural component in the respiration–fMRI relationship is largely unexplored. To elucidate this issue, here we simultaneously recorded the electrophysiology, rsfMRI, and respiration signals in rats.
Our data show that respiration is indeed associated with neural activity changes, evidenced by a phase-locking relationship between slow respiration variations and the gamma-band power of the electrophysiological signal recorded in the anterior cingulate cortex.
Intriguingly, slow respiration variations are also linked to a characteristic rsfMRI network, which is mediated by gamma-band neural activity. In addition, this respiration-related brain network disappears when brain-wide neural activity is silenced at an isoelectrical state, while the respiration is maintained, further confirming the necessary role of neural activity in this network.
Taken together, this study identifies a respiration-related brain network underpinned by neural activity, which represents a novel component in the respiration–rsfMRI relationship that is distinct from respiration-related rsfMRI artifacts. It opens a new avenue for investigating the interactions between respiration, neural activity, and resting-state brain networks in both healthy and diseased conditions.
COVID rebounds: Immune responses may be reignited by cleanup of viral scraps
Enlarge / A box of Paxlovid, the Pfizer antiviral drug.
Pfizer’s antiviral pill Paxlovid is among the most treasured tools for hammering COVID-19; it can knock back the relative risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent in unvaccinated patients at high risk of severe disease. But, as use of the convenient drug has grown in the US, so have troubling reports of rebound cases—people who took the pill early in their infection, began feeling better, and even tested negative but then slid back into symptoms and tested positive again days later.
It’s still unclear just how common the phenomenon is, but it certainly happens in some proportion of Paxlovid-treated patients. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even issued a health alert over the rebound reports.
But, amid the rising awareness, it has also become clear that patients who have not been treated with Paxlovid can also rebound. In fact, in Pfizer’s clinical trials of Paxlovid, researchers noted that about 1 percent to 2 percent of both treatment and placebo groups had rebounds.
Together, this has raised a slew of questions: Are the rebounds reignited infections? Are people still infectious? Do they need to resume isolation? Are they again at risk of severe disease? Did their immune systems fail to mount an effective response? Is the virus mutating to become resistant to Paxlovid? Is omicron causing more rebounds than previous variants?
So far, there’s limited data and mostly only anecdotal reports. But a new, small pre-print study led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health offers some encouraging news about COVID rebounds. The study, which included data on seven rebounding patients—six of whom were treated with Paxlovid and one who was not—found no evidence of Paxlovid-resistant mutations, viral replication gone wild, or faltering immune responses.
Intact immune responses
Instead, a detailed look at their immune responses found that rebounds were associated with a surge in antibody and cellular immune responses specific against SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, rebounds were accompanied by downward trends in markers of innate (non-specific) immune responses, as well as levels of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid bits in the blood.
Together, the findings suggest that the rebounds could be partly due to reignited immune response as the body works to clear cellular debris and viral scraps from a quickly smothered infection. Or, as the authors put it: “rebound symptoms may in fact be partially driven by the emerging immune response against residual viral antigens possibly shed from dying infected cells due to cytotoxicity and tissue repair throughout the respiratory tract.”
In further support of this, the authors—co-led by infectious disease experts Brian Epling and Joe Rocco—note that while three of four controls had a recoverable, live virus during their acute infection, only one of the seven rebounding patients had a live virus at the time of their rebound. And that one patient also had underlying immune suppression, which may explain the finding. Further, none of the rebounding patients developed severe disease.
The study is, again, very small and may not be generalizable to all rebound cases. The authors call for rebound studies with larger cohorts. But some elements of the findings are already backed up. For instance, other studies have also failed to identify Paxlovid-resistant mutations. And on Tuesday, the CDC published a study of more than 5,000 Paxlovid-treated patients, finding that less than 1 percent of patients had emergency visits or hospitalizations in the 5-to-15 rebound period after treatment.
For now, the NIH researchers find their new findings “encouraging.” As Epling wrote in a tweet on Tuesday, ” the findings suggest that “an appropriate immune response is developing, so rebound isn’t caused by people not developing an immune response to COVID while on Paxlovid.”
Elon Musk Posts Tesla Job Ad On Twitter, Receives Hilarious Responses
Tesla is looking to build a litigation department to initiate and execute lawsuits. (File)
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently posted a job advertisement on Twitter and internet users could not help but troll the billionaire.
A day after reports emerged of sexual harassment allegations against Elon Musk – which he denounced as “utterly untrue” – the Tesla chief tweeted that his car company would be setting up a “hardcore litigation department” to “directly initiate and execute lawsuits” – with the team reporting directly to him.
In a Twitter threat, Mr Musk wrote, “My commitment: we will never seek victory in a just case against us, even if we will probably win [and] we will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose.” He went on to add that he was “looking for hardcore streetfighters, not white-shoe lawyers”, and that “there will be blood”.
Tesla is building a hardcore litigation department where we directly initiate & execute lawsuits. The team will report directly to me.
Please send 3 to 5 bullet points describing evidence of exceptional ability.
justice@tesla.com
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022
Mr Musk asked prospective candidates to share three to five bullet points showing “evidence of exceptional ability”. In response, Twitter users decided to have some fun as some users mocked Mr Musk for finding the finest legal minds in the world on social media, while others pitched hilarious points, just as the Tesla chief had asked.
Also Read | Analysis – Tesla Brand Threatened By Musk Harassment Claim, Criticism Of Democrats
“Because if I wanted to assemble a team of the finest legal minds in the world, the first place I would go would be Twitter, absolutely,” wrote one user. Another shared three bullet points, “1. In July 2017, I drank 69 beers in one day 2. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Arizona dive bars 3. I graduated Magna Cum Laude from a Tier 1 law school. These are ranked in order of importance”. A third user said that she had a “great deal of experience stealing coffee from Harvard Law”.
1. 3rd fastest runner in my class
2. Have replied to every one of your tweets
3. Can burp the ABC’s
4. Have eaten 19 Oreos in one sitting
5. Can float on my back without a life jacket— greg (@greg16676935420) May 20, 2022
• I went to business school
• I like green beans
• I am 6’4”
• I can read and write in English and Spanish
• I am getting a little bald which is proof of my wisdomYou have 2 hours.
— Quinn Nelson (@SnazzyQ) May 20, 2022
To: justice@tesla.com
Subject: Hardcore Litigation Department Associate (Applicant)• Helped my mom w her lawsuits????⚖️
• My mom said I’m smarter than her????
• I’m a Libra⚖— Not_Elm0???????? (@Not_Elm0) May 21, 2022
1. In July 2017, I drank 69 beers in one day
2. I have encyclopedic knowledge of Arizona dive bars
3. I graduated Magna Cum Laude from a Tier 1 law school
These are ranked in order of importance.
— Clue Heywood (@ClueHeywood) May 20, 2022
Meanwhile, it is to mention that Business Insider reported on Thursday that SpaceX paid $250,000 in 2018 to settle a sexual harassment claim for an unnamed private jet flight attendant who accused Mr Musk of exposing himself to her. The article quoted an anonymous person who stated that she was a friend of the flight attendant.
Also Read | Musk Says ‘Tesla Is On My Mind 24/7’ Amid Concerns About Twitter Distraction
However, the same day, Elon Musk denounced the “utterly untrue” claims. He said that “it never happened” and challenged the anonymous person to describe one thing that isn’t known by the public.
Blinken announces US has delivered written responses to Russia over Ukraine crisis
Blinken said the US response to Russia “sets out a serious diplomatic path forward should Russia choose it,” telling reporters Wednesday that he expects to have a follow-up discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the coming days now that the document has been received in Moscow.
The response was delivered in person to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs by US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan. The written document is intended to address concerns Moscow has publicly released and to outline areas where the US has said it sees potential for progress with Russia — arms control, transparency and stability, the top US diplomat told reporters at the State Department.
“The document we’ve delivered includes concerns of the United States and our allies and partners about Russia’s actions that undermine security, a principled and pragmatic evaluation of the concerns that Russia has raised, and our own proposals for areas where we may be able to find common ground,” Blinken said.
It’s not yet clear whether the latest diplomatic overture, which Moscow had sought, will change the course of talks between Russia and the West that have continued over the past several weeks. US officials have said that Russia has shown no signs of de-escalation and they have warned that an invasion could be imminent as Moscow masses tens of thousands of troops on the Ukrainian border.
The US has repeatedly said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s central demand — that the US and NATO commit to never admitting Ukraine to the alliance — is simply a nonstarter. While Blinken declined to detail specifics presented to Moscow, he said the US response reiterated the West’s public response to uphold NATO’s “open-door policy” rejecting Moscow’s demands that NATO commit to never admitting Ukraine.
“There is no change. There will be no change,” Blinken said of US and NATO support of the alliance’s open-door policy.
“We make clear that there are core principles that we are committed to uphold and defend, including Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the right of states to choose their own security arrangements and alliances,” he added.
The ball is now in Russia’s court, Blinken said Wednesday.
“I think there are important things to work with if Russia is serious about working. And that is up to President Putin. We’ll see how they respond,” he said.
‘Not a formal negotiating document’
President Joe Biden was “intimately involved” in the US written response to Moscow, Blinken said.
“We reviewed it with him repeatedly over the last weeks, just as we were getting, as you know, comments, input, ideas from allies and partners,” Blinken said in response to a question from CNN’s Kylie Atwood.
Blinken contended that the document, which was delivered Wednesday, is “not a formal negotiating document.”
“It’s not explicit proposals. It lays out the areas and some ideas of how we can together, if they’re serious, advance collective security,” he said.
Blinken underscored that the US response was “fully coordinated with Ukraine and our European allies and partners,” and a source familiar said Ukraine had received a copy of the US document.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak told CNN Wednesday that the US response was “the right strategy,” adding that Russia should take the opportunity to use diplomacy to “avoid a negative scenario.”
“The comprehensive, well-thought-out, factual, and well-argued response of the United States to Russia’s demands was coordinated with Ukraine and other European partners of America,” Podoliak said.
Blinken said the document had also been shared with Congress and that he was briefing congressional leaders.
He said the US would not release its document publicly, “because we think that diplomacy has the best chance to succeed if we provide space for confidential talks.”
“We hope and expect that Russia will have the same view and will take our proposal seriously,” Blinken said, adding, “there should be no doubt about our seriousness of purpose when it comes to diplomacy.”
However, US officials have acknowledged there is a high possibility that Russia publishes the full document after receiving it.
The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that it had received the response. “Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Alexander V. Grushko received US Ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan at his request,” the ministry said in a statement.
NATO also sent a written response to Moscow’s security demands on Wednesday, alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. The NATO proposal was sent in “parallel with the United States,” he said during a news conference in Brussels, Belgium.
Although the positions of Moscow and the alliance are “far apart,” the NATO chief outlined three main areas where NATO sees “room for progress.” He asked that Moscow and NATO reopen their “respective offices in Moscow and in Brussels.”
“We should also make full use of our existing military-to-military channels of communications, to promote transparency and reduce risks,” he said. “And look also into setting up a civilian hotline for emergency use.”
Still hopes for fueling diplomacy
US officials said they had decided to provide responses in writing — a demand Russia has made since it put written ideas forward in December — in an effort to fuel the diplomacy that the US hopes will deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We put these ideas forward because they have the potential, if negotiated in good faith, to enhance our security and that of our allies and partners while also addressing Russia’s stated concerns through reciprocal commitments,” Blinken said Wednesday.
“We’re open to dialogue. We prefer diplomacy and we’re prepared to move forward where there is the possibility of communication, cooperation, if Russia de-escalates its aggression toward Ukraine, stops the inflammatory rhetoric and approaches discussions about the future security in Europe in a spirit of reciprocity,” he said.
But some allies and experts are skeptical of how much emphasis should be put on this document from the US, as it is not expected to give room for negotiation on Russia’s key demands, and there is concern that Moscow will use the US response as a pretext to say diplomacy has failed.
The top US diplomat acknowledged that it “may well be right that Russia’s not serious about this at all.”
“But we have an obligation to test that proposition, to pursue the diplomatic path, to leave no diplomatic stone unturned, because for sure it’s far preferable to resolve these differences peacefully consistent with our principles than it would be to have renewed aggression, renewed conflict, and everything that will follow from that,” he said.
“But the point is we’re prepared either way,” Blinken said.
This story has been updated with background and further developments Wednesday.
CNN’s Casey Riddle, Ellie Kaufman, Darya Tarasova, Lauren Kent and Lindsay Isaac contributed to this report.
Nocebo responses explain up to 76% of COVID vaccine side effects
Enlarge / A drive-up COVID-19 vaccination site from Renown Health on December 17, 2020, in Reno, Nevada.
Even before their rollout, a distinct feature of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines has been their “reactogenicity”—that is, their tendency to cause mild symptoms that signal immune responses firing up after a shot, particularly the second one. As vaccine supplies were unleashed in the US last year, families, friends, and coworkers swapped stories of their harrowing post-jab days, often recalling fevers, chills, fatigue, and general crumminess.
Although those experiences are unquestionably real, their connection to the vaccines may not be. As more and more results from randomized-controlled vaccine trials hit science journals, researchers kept noting that, while trial participants often reported mild symptoms after shots, so too did the participants who received placebos—and not at trivial levels.
Many people are familiar with “placebo effects,” which happen when an inert intervention leads people to report health benefits that couldn’t possibly have been caused by the faux treatment. Placebo effects are well-documented and real—in that people can indeed experience a certain extent of psychosomatic benefits. A placebo will not treat serious medical conditions, such as cancer, but it could, for example, lead people to feel they have more energy or less general discomfort.
But placebos also have a dark side. The harmless interventions can just as easily lead people to report harmful side effects, particularly when people are expecting such side effects. Researchers have coined these phantom adverse reactions “nocebo responses.” Nocebo responses are thought to stem from expectations of side effects, anxiety-induced effects, and the mistaken attribution of common, nonspecific ailments, like headaches, to the placebo.
COVID vaccine nocebos
Nocebo responses were startlingly common in trials of COVID-19 vaccines, and a new study quantified just how big a role they played. The meta-analysis, led by Harvard researchers and published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, looked at side-effect data from 12 high-quality randomized clinical trials testing various COVID-19 vaccines against inert placebo control groups. The analysis concluded that nocebo responses accounted for 76 percent of systemic adverse reactions—like headache, fever, and chills—after the first vaccine dose and 52 percent of systemic reactions after the second vaccine dose.
The rates of side effects in the placebo groups were “substantial,” the researchers, led by Harvard research scientist Julia Haas, concluded. While common, nonspecific symptoms, like fatigue and headache, are among the most common side effects linked to the vaccines, the study found them “to be particularly associated with nocebo.”
Of course, the point of this analysis isn’t just to make you question your sanity (although, seriously, your mind might be messing with you). The main point is that these nocebo responses are likely making safe, life-saving vaccines seem significantly less pleasant than they actually are—and apprehension about such unpleasant side effects is a known reason why some people choose not to get vaccinated.
“Informing the public about the potential for nocebo responses may help reduce worries about COVID-19 vaccination, which might decrease vaccination hesitancy,” Haas and her colleagues wrote. In addition, some clinical evidence suggests that making people aware of nocebo responses can also lower their expectation for side effects and thereby actually lead to fewer perceived side effects.
Real effects
Of course, not all side effects are nocebo responses; some are clearly real, particularly local reactions and side effects after the second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
In the meta-analysis, Haas and her colleagues found that about 35 percent of placebo recipients reported at least one systemic side effect after their first faux dose. Meanwhile, 46 percent of vaccine recipients reported at least one systemic side effect after getting their first real dose. When the researchers looked at the severity levels of all of those systemic side effects, they found similar proportions of severity grades between the placebo and vaccine groups. In other words, the vaccine group wasn’t collectively reporting more severe side effects than the placebo group. But there was a clear difference in the local side effects. Only 16 percent of placebo recipients reported local side effects, like pain or swelling at the injection site, while 67 percent of the vaccine group reported such effects.
After the second dose, there were even more differences. About 32 percent of the placebo group reported at least one systemic effect, while 61 percent of the vaccine group reported systemic effects. And in this case, the vaccine group tended to report more moderate to severe systemic effects than the placebo group. As in the first shot, the vaccine group had more local side effects, with about 73 percent reporting local effects while only about 12 percent of people in the placebo group reported them.
Overall, the nocebo responses clearly seem to be skewing our experience with COVID-19 vaccines, which are being used the world over. As such, the researchers argue that highlighting the potential for nocebo responses could reduce side effects and help improve vaccine uptake.