Less than 0.001% of Americans who received the J&J vaccine later developed a rare autoimmune disease

A very small percentage of people who receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine develop a rare autoimmune disease as a side effect, according to a new report.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it had identified only 98 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome in about 12.6 million people.

That’s a rate of less than 0.001%, or about eight cases for every million people vaccinated with the single-dose vaccine.

Of those 98 cases, 95 people were hospitalized, ten were admitted to an intensive care unit and only one died.

The CDC says the benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 far outweigh the risks of this Guillain-Barré, which can cause nerve damage and temporary paralysis.

As of August 9, more than 195 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

With such a large number of people vaccinated, CDC’s vaccine safety tracking system is able to identify very rare vaccine side effects – those that occur so rarely that they were not identified at times. clinical tests.

These side effects include cardiac inflammation linked to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and Guillain-Barré syndrome, linked to the J&J vaccine.

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare autoimmune disease. Complications in a patient’s immune system lead to nerve damage and muscle weakness, which leaves the patient temporarily paralyzed.

The syndrome can cause permanent paralysis and death in rare cases.

The CDC identified 98 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome linked to the J&J vaccination in June 2021, according to a report released on Tuesday.

More than 12.6 million Americans had been vaccinated with the J&J vaccine by that time, meaning the syndrome occurred at a rate of less than 0.001%.

For every million people vaccinated with the J&J vaccine, only eight have suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome.

In total, the CDC says 100 cases of the syndrome have been reported to the agency through its vaccine-related adverse event reporting system.

However, two of those cases either did not occur within 42 days of vaccination or had enough patient information for the CDC to confirm they were linked to the vaccination.

The median age of these patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome was 57 years, with a range of 24 to 76 years.

Men – especially older men – are more likely to suffer from this syndrome than women. Of the 98 cases identified by the CDC, 61 involved men.

For men aged 50 to 64, the rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome after J&J vaccination is 16 cases for every million people vaccinated, which is double the rate for the general population.

Of the 98 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome identified, 95 people were hospitalized because of this side effect.

Only ten patients were admitted to an intensive care unit and one died.

These cases provide evidence for the recent addition by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of a warning about Guillain-Barré syndrome to the J&J vaccine label.

The warning was added on July 12. At the time, the FDA was referring to reports of around 100 cases, which matches data recently released by the CDC.

Overall, however, the CDC says the benefits of vaccinating with the J&J vaccine far outweigh the risks of this serious side effect.

The J&J vaccine is 90 percent effective in preventing serious illness and death from Covid, and 66 percent effective in preventing symptomatic illness.

This outweighs both the risks of Guillain-Barré syndrome and a type of severe blood clotting, which affects three in a million people vaccinated with J&J.

“Per million doses of J&J Covid vaccine given to men aged 50 to 64, 1,800 hospitalizations, 480 intensive care admissions and 140 deaths attributable to COVID-19 could be prevented,” the CDC wrote in its report.

This is compared to 14 to 17 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and one to two cases of blood clots.