Study of 1.7 Million Children Finds Heart Inflammation Only in Vaccinated Group

A large-scale observational study conducted in England has found that all documented cases of myocarditis and pericarditis among children and adolescents occurred in recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, with no cases recorded among unvaccinated participants.

The research, published in Epidemiology and conducted using the OpenSAFELY-TPP database with approval from NHS England, examined the safety and effectiveness of Pfizer's BNT162b2 vaccine in young people following the national rollout that began in September 2021. The study population included adolescents between 12 and 15 years of age as well as children between 5 and 11 years old, with researchers matching vaccinated individuals against unvaccinated controls based on age, sex, region, and other relevant characteristics.

Their findings were shocking. Among the combined cohorts of approximately 1.7 million children and adolescents tracked across England, the researchers recorded myocarditis and pericarditis at rates of 27 cases per million following the first vaccine dose and 10 cases per million after the second dose, with these cardiac inflammatory conditions appearing solely within the vaccinated populations.

While the cardiac inflammation findings will likely raise concerns, the research also demonstrated that vaccination reduced certain COVID-19-related outcomes among adolescents. The researchers noted, however, that protection against testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 proved temporary rather than lasting. Among younger children aged 5 to 11, COVID-19-related outcomes were so infrequent that the study team could not calculate precise incidence rate ratios, indicating that severe disease remained exceptionally rare in this age group regardless of vaccination status.

What Some Already Suspected

For those who have followed the vaccine safety conversation closely over the past few years, this study's cardiac findings may not come as a shock. Concerns about myocarditis in young people following mRNA vaccination have circulated since the shots first became available to adolescents, and some voices raised alarms early on despite facing significant pushback.

In September 2022, Evie Magazine reported on a nurse who claimed she was fired from Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego after questioning why doctors weren't reporting pediatric myocarditis cases to VAERS, the federal vaccine adverse event reporting system. The nurse, who said she worked in the cardiovascular intensive care unit, alleged that discussing the potential connection between the vaccines and the heart inflammation cases she was seeing firsthand was "an unspoken thing that we were not allowed to talk about openly on the unit." And, that same year, Evie wrote about a study showing how the vaccine can result in a much higher risk of cardiac arrest in both men and women.

Two years later, in September 2024, Evie covered a resurfaced interview in which Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged the link between mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, stating: "Of course, with the mRNA, there's a very, very, very low risk, particularly in young men, of getting myocarditis."

Now, with peer-reviewed data from a study of 1.7 million children confirming that all documented cases of myocarditis and pericarditis occurred exclusively among vaccinated participants, parents who hesitated or refused the shots for their children may feel their caution was justified. Healthcare workers who raised concerns and faced professional consequences may feel similarly vindicated.

The larger question remains: for the children who did develop heart inflammation following vaccination, what recourse do their families have? Will there be compensation, acknowledgment, or accountability for those whose hearts were affected by a vaccine they were assured was safe?