Studies Link Incurable Prion Disease With COVID-19 Vaccines

A syringe inserted into a COVID-19 vaccine vial. Robert Avgustin/Shutterstock

Studies on COVID-19 vaccines have suggested a link between receiving the vaccination and developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare and fatal brain condition.

A now peer-reviewed French study suggests that the Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines may have contributed to the emergence of a new type of sporadic CJD that is much more aggressive and rapid in progression than the traditional form of the disease.

CJD is caused by abnormalities in proteins in the brain called prions. When prion proteins become diseased or misfolded, they cause nearby proteins to also become misshapen, leading to the deterioration of brain tissue and eventual death.

The disease is incurable, as abnormal prions continue to propagate, and currently there isn’t any treatment capable of stopping this process.

The majority of people with CJD have the sporadic type, meaning they become infected for no apparent reason. A small subset of people are diagnosed due to heredity.

Sporadic CJD, though occurring at random, has been linked to the consumption of contaminated meat, such as beef from a cow that has been infected with diseased prions.

The first Wuhan COVID-19 strain and the Delta variant both have a prion region in their spike protein, while the Omicron variant doesn’t.

Therefore, when the Wuhan variant’s spike protein gene information was used to make mRNA and adenoviral DNA vaccines, the prion region was also incorporated.

A U.S. study published in the journal Microorganisms indicates that the prion area is able to interact with human cells by assisting with the virus’s entry.

After a patient takes an mRNA vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna, the mRNA is naturally incorporated into the person’s cells, which then use the mRNA instructions to produce a synthetic spike protein.When the spike protein is released by the cell into the bloodstream or tissue fluids, immune cells will recognize it as a foreign substance and mount an immune attack. The cells will thus create an immunological memory against a component of the coronavirus.

For the AstraZeneca vaccine, which uses an adenoviral vector platform, the DNA of the spike protein is carried into the cell by a genetically engineered adenovirus. The DNA then enters the nucleus, where all human DNA is stored. From there, the DNA is transcribed into spike protein mRNA, which the cell then uses to produce the protein.

Though major health organizations say genetic material from the vaccines isn’t incorporated into human DNA, mRNA studies conducted on human cells in labs have found that mRNA can be transcribed into DNA and then incorporated into the human genome.

A U.S. study published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research  outlines how errors can occur in the process of translating mRNA information into proteins, leading to protein misfolding.

Further, the study highlighted that the spike protein genetic sequence in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been “mutated,” or changed, so that the protein would be more stable in the body and have a harder time getting into the cell. This was done deliberately so that the viral proteins would be exposed longer and therefore would elicit a stronger immune response.

This new change introduced into the spike proteins may also increase the chance of misfolding, wrote the study’s authors.

Previous studies of CJD in cannibalistic groups have indicated that CJD can remain dormant after infection for around 10 years or more. A study published in the journal Nature has indicated that kuru, a form of CJD endemic to Papua New Guinea, can be dormant for over 50 years.

However, the authors of the French study found that the cases of CJD observed in individuals who had received COVID-19 vaccines were a lot more rapid in onset, with symptoms appearing within 11.38 days of being vaccinated, which is indicative of a new form of CJD.

A peer-reviewed study in Turkey (pdf) identified a sudden case of CJD in an 82-year-old woman whose symptoms appeared one day after receiving the first dose of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine, also known as CoronaVac. Unlike mRNA- and vector-based vaccines, CoronaVac is an inactivated vaccine, which means that it contains an inactivated version of the original coronavirus.

The French study identified 26 cases across Europe and the United States. Twenty of the individuals had already died by the time the study was written, with death occurring, on average, 4.76 months after being vaccinated. Among the 20 deaths, eight of the individuals experienced sudden death, in an average time period of 2 1/2 months after vaccination.

“All this confirms the radically different nature of this new form of CJD, whereas the classic form requires several decades,” the researchers wrote.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Jean-Claude Perez, informed The Epoch Times on June 6 by email that all 26 patients in the study had died.

The researchers thanked Marc Doyer in their acknowledgments. Doyer, president of the CJD France Association, collected many CJD cases in a few months, of which 23 were fully analyzed and then mentioned in the study. The passing of Doyer’s wife, who developed CJD 14 days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine and died a year later, was the motivator behind the work of Doyer and Perez and his research team.