The Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine (Comirnaty) showed a good safety profile with minimal short-term side effects and no negative impact on disease activity in a cohort of adolescents and young adults with rheumatic diseases, according to research presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA). Only 3% of patients experience a severe transient adverse event, according to Merav Heshin-Bekenstein, MD, of Dana-Dwek Children's Hospital at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel. The findings were also published in Rheumatology.
"We found that the mRNA Pfizer vaccine was immunogenic and induced an adequate humoral immune response in adolescent patients," Heshin-Bekenstein told CARRA attendees. "It was definitely comparable to healthy controls and practically all patients were seropositive following the second vaccine, except for one patient with long-standing systemic sclerosis
