Abstract
Vaccines represent one of the most effective measures of public health medicine, saving countless lives and preventing lifelong disabilities. Vaccines are extremely safe, however, no vaccine is completely free from risks and adverse events can occur following vaccination. An adverse event following immunization (AEFI) may be a true adverse reaction caused by the vaccine or an event that temporally occurred after immunization but is not caused by it. Among the adverse reactions to vaccines, one of the most feared is the triggering of autoimmune diseases, which are a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by dysregulation of the immune system. Currently, no mechanisms have been demonstrated that could explain the correlation between vaccination and the development of autoimmune diseases. Furthermore, epidemiological studies do not support the hypothesis that vaccines cause systemic autoimmune diseases. The only confirmed associations, although very rare, are those between the flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré syndrome, especially with old vaccine preparations, and measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and thrombocytopenia. Due to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, new types of vaccines have been developed and are now available. Close vaccine safety-surveillance is currently underway for these new vaccines.
Highlights
Immunization is one of the most effective measures of public health medicine, saving countless lives and preventing lifelong disabilities
Vaccines have been studied and monitored over time in order to evaluate a possible link between vaccination and the onset of autoimmune diseases or immune-mediated phenomena
A causal link between vaccination and adverse event following immunization (AEFI) has been ascertained only for a few cases; AEFI are significantly lower after vaccination than those produced by infection with the wild microorganism, confirming the high safety profile of vaccines
Summary
Immunization is one of the most effective measures of public health medicine, saving countless lives and preventing lifelong disabilities. Autoimmune diseases are a group of heterogeneous diseases characterized by an aberrant immune response caused by the loss of self-tolerance These conditions can be systemic or organ-specific, but all of them have an etiology that is not fully understood. The main hypothesis that has been proposed to explain this immunological association is epitope mimicry, just like in infections According to this mechanism, an antigen that is administered with the vaccine may share structural similarities with selfantigens. Many isolated cases or case series of arthritis, vasculitis and central or peripheral nervous system symptoms in temporal relationship with vaccination are reported as AEFI in the scientific literature; despite this, currently no mechanisms have been demonstrated that can explain the correlation between vaccination and the development of chronic autoimmune diseases. We are going to report the latest available data on autoimmune reactions following vaccination with anti-SARS-CoV2
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