Biodistribution of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in human breast milk | Hacker News Reader

Biodistribution of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in human breast milk

thelancet.com

61 pointsshaicoleman37 comments

> Our findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 vaccine mRNA is not confined to the injection site but spreads systemically and is packaged into BM EVs.

I thought Pfizer tested the vaccine and said this wouldn’t happen.

That's what was claimed, yes.

Source? I don’t recall this being a claim, at least not in the strongest claim of “100% stays in the muscle for all patients.”

Where did you see them claim this?

> However, as only trace quantities are present and a clear translational activity is absent, we believe breastfeeding post-vaccination is safe, especially 48 h after vaccination.

“I’m doing this for baby” ads turned out to be true. Or maybe it should have been “I’m doing this to baby.”

With the amount of backtracking any of this “we believe we totally did nothing wrong and you shouldn’t look too closely at us, ok?” Just really doesn’t sit well with me. What about the same “we believe” claims on transmission? Efficacy? Safety? Lots of modifying after the fact and “oops, sorry!”

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

If drinking mRNA did anything, we wouldn't need needles for the vaccine, and we also wouldn't be able to eat meat.

> Lots of modifying after the fact and “oops, sorry!”

Nah, none of that happened and when it did it was natural and didn't imply any mistakes. If you're going to misunderstand research, it's better not to think about it in the first place.

(Example: efficacy of a vaccine always appears highest when noone's gotten the vaccine yet. This is a base rate effect.)

Of course, there were some other less effective vaccines in poor deprived countries like China and England, but we can't do much about that.

I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. Check out An oral vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 RBD mRNA-bovine milk-derived exosomes induces a neutralizing antibody response in vivo [1].

[1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.19.517879v1

That's a completely different architecture than current lipid nanoparticle mRNA vaccines. It would be obvious to anyone with even a modicum of knowledge that the linked paper is not relevant.

Let's say it's true that it stayed locally, why do we them expect it to create immunity for the body and not just that area?

Immunity does not mean mRNA molecules diffused across the body. The mRNAs are supposed to be translated and degrated yielding the antigen protein. This antigens cause inflammation at the area of injection and in theory only the protein antigen will be circulated by the immune cells to generate immunity.

I'm recalling from a podcast that intramuscular shots doesn't really isolate but rather slows down the actual spread within the body. There's still capillaries and the lymphatic system where the shots can travel. How else do we explain what is happening?

When I eat a raw vegetable or a piece of sashimi I'm consuming many pieces of mRNA. Does it matter what these molecules encode for? Doesn't my stomach just chop everything up? Would it matter if a baby ate COVID vaccine mRNA?

Basically. It’s very unlikely any mRNA would survive intact in the stomach.

While it’s slightly concerning that the baby ingests genetically engineered mRNA that has been untested for infant consumption, the more pressing concern is that mRNA proliferated further than expected in mothers’ bodies.

We were originally told that mRNA vaccines did not spread around the body.

An mRNA vaccine that spreads around the body is problematic, because the body’s own cytotoxic T cells and NK (natural killer) cells will destroy some of our own cells if they express the spike protein (as prompted by the mRNA vaccine). This is particularly problematic in heart cells, where permanent scarring of tissue can occur, weakening the heart and shortening the life of the patient.

> We were originally told that mRNA vaccines did not spread around the body.

It's injected into the bloodstream, how can it not?

Vaccines like this are not meant to be injected into the bloodstream. They’re meant to be injected into muscle tissue.

There is an injection technique called “aspiration” that is specifically intended to avoid vaccines being inadvertently injected into the bloodstream.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intramuscular_injection

Unfortunately many countries have stopped performing this safety technique as it causes the injection to be more painful.

The doctors giving the injections here in Belgium were explicitly told not to aspirate. I asked both of the ones I had. They said it went against their training, but apparently they were told aspiration would somehow destroy the very fragile vaccine. None of them sounded convinced but both refused to aspirate.

Interesting.

I would have walked out the surgery if the doctor refused to perform this simple safety precaution.

"Destroying the vaccine" sounds like a peculiar argument against aspiration.

You could walk out, but that meant the app by the goverment would not show the "fully vaxed" status. This app was mandatory checked at every bar, cafe, restaurant, theater, ... , and they had to refuse you entrance if not vaxed.

Incorrect. It is injected into muscle (ie IM vs IV). Furthermore, we were told for safety’s sake it would be absorbed locally. Finding it in breast milk, heart, ovaries, etc is a big ducking deal. Long term effects? Unknown but a certain subset of population very quick to minimize it. Like feeding your baby pharmaceutically altered mRNA is just like feeding your baby a carrot. Uh huh, sure, Prove it. That’s the whole point, can’t prove anything because they destroyed the control group (officially at least, my opinion is that we are all in the same massive experiment so I guess that makes me control).

Nah, moving goal posts on “safe and effective.” One by one the claims are they made have been dropped from marketing materials. The posters around my hospital sure have changed in the strength of their claims over the last few years.

It's not only the heart that's at risk. The shots have been seen to cause diabetes or cause uncontrollable ketoacidosis in people who are already diabetic.

This isn't a surprise because diabetes is caused by the destruction of irreplaceable cells in the pancreas. The body can't regrow them and you are diabetic for life. So if those cells take up vaccine mRNA and express spike, the body will destroy them thinking they are infected with something (which they sort of are), and that will create new diabetics.

Originally we were told such cases were just coincidences, but that this can happen is obvious from the mechanism of action which is why they stressed so hard that the shots would stay in the arm muscles. Nowadays doctors recognize that the mRNA can spread through the body and cells can be destroyed anywhere. Example case report:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12020-022-03130-8

Even Moderna's own study of the shots on young children caused one of participants to get diabetes a month later and they admitted it was causal, but the case was only mentioned at the very end of the appendix (see page 62 here https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2209367/suppl_f...)

We now know it also crosses the blood brain barrier.

This is all news to me and to be honest not even sure I understand it all.

Given that, how would you rate the potential danger of these vaccines to the COVID itself? As in keep getting the boosters or not?

What about the Novavax vaccine as an alternate? Not that I see it available locally but am curious about it.

Modern COVID isn't dangerous. The vaccines can be. And the vaccines don't stop you getting COVID anyway, so, the risk is additive in any event. Your call.

You can tell that it's fine because babies already survive breastfeeding from women who eat meat. Whether or not the mRNA breaks down, it's not harmful.

Babies are actually different from adults here; they get antibodies from breast milk and it supports their immune system, since theirs isn't developed. It's a good thing.

Foreign mRNA doesn't hurt us because it's recognized by the body as harmful and immediately destroyed by the immune system. This was one of the biggest challenges to developing mRNA based drugs and vaccines.

The mRNA used in the COVID shots isn't normal, of the type found in the wild. It's been created in such a way that the immune system doesn't recognize it, and then wrapped in artificial lipids. So you can't generalize from natural mRNA molecules to the artificial types, they are fundamentally different in both construction and effect.

This is an incredibly bad and short-sighted take.

This is not at all the same situation, and this sort of hubris is what causes public health disasters such as the Vioxx, Thalidomide or Dengvaxia scandals.

This is artificially created genetic material ending up in newborns after the manufacturer assured the public that was not possible.

I consider this incredibly serious.

If you're opposed to genetic material ending up in babies, I have bad news about their habit of putting everything in your house in their mouths.

So the question is if it harms them, which this paper says it doesn't, and the mRNA vaccines are approved for infants already.

Possibly. The article notes:

> Because of their ability to transfer and protect the mRNA, milk EVs have been tested as a vehicle for COVID mRNA oral vaccine

These mRNA fragments are also heavily engineered in a way sashimi mRNA isn’t.

> These mRNA fragments are also heavily engineered in a way sashimi mRNA isn’t.

Could you point to the difference you believe is important? What on earth is “heavily engineered” supposed to mean in the context of mRNA?

Ah that's where the small print is important.

This isn't "mRNA" this is modified-mRNA (where the name Moderna comes from). Unfortunately they are allowed to abbreviate it as mRNA, which IMO is extremely problematic.

Modified-mRNA uses pseudouridine in some of its base pairs. As such, it is able to remain stable for orders of magnitude more time in many chemical situations.

This practice is incredibly deceptive and lead many in the medical profession to disregard some pretty serious safety issues.

Does the use of pseudouridine occur in all modified mRNA vaccines?

From what I understand, yes.

Natural mRNA is too unstable to reliably transport into the cell via injection. Part of the reason mRNA gene treatments spent so long in development without a single approved product.

The two technologies that facilitate this techonology are:

1. Base-modified mRNA (modRNA or :( mRNA), where they substitue uridine.

2. Nano-technology which protects the payload in a bubble of fat, lipid-nano-particles (LNPs).

While LNPs on their own are capable of their own side effects, the modRNA is particularly worrying because of its extended lifetime. IIRC some studies claim to have found it intact many weeks after injection, which would be astounding were we talking of natural mRNA.

Bret Weinstein said of this situation "if a fiberglass tree falls in the forest", which illustrates that most biologists and medical professionals could estimate how long a tree would take to decompose in a forest, however, their estimates would be wildly incorrect if you omitted to tell them the tree was made of fiberglass.

The podcast where he discusses this is here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Qyhu8A4wuCPkvCXM0KLut

Why is this important? Because two years ago the claim was the opposite in preprint.

We also don’t know if it is safe for this amount to be passed to newborn/infants which is why they urge caution of no BM for two days until further researched.

Newborns especially have fresh microbiomes and are being exposed to new things everyday and especially through BM. The first major time they are exposed to microbes is through delivery. Things like C-section and formula feeding prevent this rich exposure. Usually why we wait until the 6 month mark for certain vaccines, as the microbiome and immune system will be strong enough to fight.

Could be misremembering, but I believe Pfizer turned in no data on breastfeeding in their initial assessment for the EU. If so, a curious omission.

I think that's what the authors in this paper are saying. To resource maternal health data.

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