Why is the @statnews report of transverse myelitis in a volunteer of the AZ vaccine worrisome?

TM is a rare & serious disease. The immune system attacks the spinal cord; it can be triggered by autoimmune diseases like sarcoidosis and viral infections (usually enterovoruses) 1/3

Extremely rarely transverse myelitis has been linked to vaccinations although this is (unsurprisingly) controversial & data underwhelming:

A review of ~64 million vaccinations found just 7 TM cases temporally related ( in 5-28 days preceding onset)

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/63/11/1456/2526239 2/3

As @boulware_dr points out, TM in general pop occurs ~5/million ppl

So a single case of TM in a vaccination trial with tens of thousands of participants is indeed unexpected

Is it linked? We don’t know

Is this a big deal? YES

Will this sink the hopes of this vaccine? https://twitter.com/boulware_dr/status/1303672188336328706