During the Covid-19 period, especially the adenovirus-based vaccines of AstraZeneca and Janssen became a turning point in public perception of pharmacological safety.
Although Immunothrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT) linked to these two vaccines is extremely rare, the high mortality rate and long absence of a clear explanation triggered one of the biggest health confidence crises of the decade.
Now medical science has accomplished the seemingly impossible: It has identified the precise molecular mechanism and genetic profile in people experiencing these complications.
To understand the magnitude of this discovery, it is necessary to examine how the immune system designs its defenses. When the body detects a foreign element, such as an adenovirus, it begins the process of refining antibodies. This is an accelerated evolutionary process in which defense cells mutate to become more vulnerable. However, for a certain group of people, this “targeting” process turned into a miscalculation that led to fatal consequences. The mechanism responsible was ‘somatic hypermutation’.
