Science news story
In February 2021, soon after the first COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out in Europe, hematologist Sabine Eichinger of the Medical University of Vienna was confronted with a disturbing case: a 49-year-old nurse who had unusual blood clots and uncontrollable bleeding after receiving AstraZeneca’s vaccine. The woman died, and Eichinger could not get the case out of her head. The vaccine seemed to be the only plausible explanation for her symptoms, and Eichinger worried what that might mean for its future. “I could barely sleep,” she says. Eichinger even attended the patient’s autopsy, hoping it would turn up some other explanation.
When it didn’t, she turned to hematologist Andreas Greinacher of the University of Greifswald, who had spent decades studying a rare, strikingly similar phenomenon in patients who received the blood thinner heparin. That disorder is caused by antibodies against PF4, a protein involved in blood clotting. Within days, Greinacher’s lab confirmed that Eichinger’s patient had those antibodies as well.
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