Myocarditis, pericarditis and mRNA vaccine against COVID-19. Expert opinion of the Italian Society of Cardiology

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused 2.69 million deaths and 122 million infections. Great efforts have been made worldwide to promptly develop effective vaccines and reduce morbidity and mortality rates from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Available vaccines have proven highly effective at preventing symptomatic disease in clinical trials and real-world reports and are playing an essential role in flattening the epidemiology curve and, mostly, in reducing COVID-19 hospitalizations. Some concerns have been raised after very rare cases of myocarditis and peri-carditis recently reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as potentially associ-ated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccinations, namely the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine (BNT162b2) and the Moderna mRNA vaccine (mRNA-1273). Therefore, the aim of this document is to explore the possible link between COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and the development of myocarditis and/or pericarditis by per-forming a critical analysis of available data and to provide indications for specific subgroups of individuals.