Page 12 - Dr Stephanie Seneff - Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID - 19

of anaphylaxis and should be undertaken only in specialist drug allergy centres.” (Sellaturay et al.,
2020). In fact it has already been demonstrated that pre-existing antibodies to PEG are linked to
more common and more severe reactions upon re-exposure (Ganson et al., 2016).

Is anaphylaxis upon exposure to PEG happening with a frequency relevant to public health?
Numerous studies have now documented the phenomenon (Lee et al., 2015; Povsic et al., 2016;
Wylon et al., 2016). Anaphylactic reactions to the mRNA vaccines are widely reported in the media
(Kelso, 2021) and, as noted above, have been frequently reported in the VAERS database (690
reports of anaphylaxis following SARS-CoV-2 vaccines up to January 29, 2021). There are also some
initial case studies published in the peer-reviewed literature (Garvey & Nasser, 2020; CDC COVID-
19 Response Team, 2021, January 15). Anaphylaxis reactions to vaccines prior to these COVID-19
vaccines were generally reported at rates less than 2 cases per million vaccinations (McNeil et al.,
2016), while the current rate with the COVID-19 vaccinations was reported by the CDC to be more
than 11 cases per million (CDC COVID-19 Response Team, 2021, January 29). However, a
published prospective study on 64,900 medical employees, where their reactions to their first mRNA
vaccination were carefully monitored, found that 2.1% of the subjects reported acute allergic
reactions. A more extreme reaction involving anaphylaxis occurred at a rate of 247 per million
vaccinations (Blumenthal et al., 2021). This is more than 21 times as many as were initially reported
by the CDC. The second injection exposure is likely to cause even larger numbers of anaphylactic
reactions.

mRNA Vaccines, Spike Proteins, and Antibody-Dependent Enhancement
(ADE)

ADE is an immunological phenomenon first described in 1964 (Hawkes et al., 1964). In that
publication Hawkes described a set of experiments in which cultures of flavivirus were incubated
with avian sera containing high titers of antibodies against those viruses. The unexpected finding
was that, with increasingly high dilutions of the antibody-containing sera, cell infectivity was enhanced.
Lack of an explanation for how this could happen is likely responsible for its being largely ignored
for almost 20 years (Morens et al., 1994).

Multiple pathways have been proposed through which antibodies both directly and indirectly
participate in the neutralization of infections (Lu et al., 2018b). ADE is a special case of what can
happen when low, non-neutralizing levels of either specific or cross-reactive antibodies against a
virus are present at the time of infection. These antibodies might be present due to prior exposure to
the virus, exposure to a related virus, or due to prior vaccination against the virus. Upon reinfection,
antibodies in insufficient numbers to neutralize the virus nevertheless bind to the virus. These
antibodies then dock at the Fc receptor on cell surfaces, facilitating viral entry into the cell and
subsequently enhancing the infectivity of the virus (Wan et. al., 2020).

ADE is believed to underlie the more severe dengue fever often observed in those with previous
exposure (Beltramello et al., 2010), and might also play a role in more severe disease among those
previously vaccinated against the disease (Shukla et al., 2020). ADE is also believed to play a role in
Ebola (Takada et al., 2003), zika virus infection (Bardina et al., 2017), and other flavivirus infections
(Campos et al., 2020).

International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research 2(1), May 10, 2021 Page | 400