Arterial stiffness

Crossover study

Cardiology

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Placebo

Endothelial dysfunction

Immunology

Alternative medicine

Blood pressure

Brachial artery

Vaccination

Statistical significance

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Internal medicine

Pulse wave velocity

Confidence interval

Medicine

Gastroenterology

Disease

Randomized controlled trial

Pathology

Hypertension Research

To fight the COVID-19 pandemic, messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines were the first to be adopted by vaccination programs worldwide. We sought to investigate the short-term effect of mRNA vaccine administration on endothelial function and arterial stiffness. Thirty-two participants (mean age 37 ± 8 years, 20 men) who received the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine were studied in three sessions in a sequence-randomized, sham-controlled, assessor-blinded, crossover design. The primary outcome was endothelial function (assessed by brachial artery flow-mediated dilatation (FMD)), and the secondary outcomes were aortic stiffness (evaluated with carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV)) and inflammation (measured by high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) in blood samples). The outcomes were assessed prior to and at 8 h and 24 h after the 1st dose of vaccine and at 8 h, 24 h, and 48 h after the 2nd dose. There was an increase in hsCRP that was apparent at 24 h after both the 1st dose (−0.60 [95% confidence intervals [CI]: −1.60 to −0.20], p = 0.013) and the 2nd dose (maximum median difference at 48 h −6.60 [95% CI: −9.80 to −3.40], p < 0.001) compared to placebo. The vaccine did not change PWV. FMD remained unchanged during the 1st dose but decreased significantly by 1.5% (95% CI: 0.1% to 2.9%, p = 0.037) at 24 h after the 2nd dose. FMD values returned to baseline at 48 h. Our study shows that the mRNA vaccine causes a prominent increase in inflammatory markers, especially after the 2nd dose, and a transient deterioration of endothelial function at 24 h that returns to baseline at 48 h. These results confirm the short-term cardiovascular safety of the vaccine. Overview of study results describing the effect of the COVID-19 vaccine on endothelial function and arterial stiffness

The effect of an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 on endothelial function and arterial stiffness