New Paper Offers Possible Explanation for Post-Vaccine Myocarditis

Healthy young people across the world are having heart issues at a seemingly unprecedented rate since the rollout of the COVID mRNA vaccines. A new brief paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine Basic Implications of Clinical Observations series: A Possible Role for Anti-idiotype Antibodies in SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Vaccination.

In it, the authors explain The Network Hypothesis, in which “antibody responses to an antigen themselves induced downstream antibody responses against the antigen-specific antibody.” Basically, when an antigen is introduced in the body, the immune system creates antibodies (Ab1) to fight off the antigen. Those antibodies, in turn, are capable of generating new antibodies (Ab2) to fight off the original antibodies as a form of down-regulation.

As the authors write:

Some of the resulting anti-idiotype (or “Ab2”) antibodies that are specific for Ab1 can structurally resemble that of the original antigens themselves. Thus, the Ab2 antigen-binding region can potentially represent an exact mirror image of the initial targeted antigen [NOTE: this means the spike protein] in the Ab1 response…

As a result of this mimicry, Ab2 antibodies also have the potential to bind the same receptor that the original antigen was targeting. Ab2 antibodies binding to the original receptor on normal cells therefore have the potential to mediate profound effects on the cell that could result in pathologic changes, particularly in the long term — long after the original antigen itself has disappeared.

They explain that this phenomenon may explain the increased cases of myocarditis and neurological disorders:

the reported occurrence of myocarditis after vaccine administration bears striking similarities to the myocarditis associated with Ab2 antibodies induced after some viral infections. Ab2 antibodies could also mediate neurologic effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccines, given the expression of ACE2 on neuronal tissues, the specific neuropathologic effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection…

This may be a problem specifically with the vaccines because the focus solely on the spike protein and not the entire SARS-CoV-2 antigen and because, according to the CDC, the vaccines lead “to a more consistent, and higher-titer initial antibody response [than natural infection].”