ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2024
Media coverage of COVID-19 vaccination-associated cerebral venous sinus thrombosis was followed by a surge in emergency presentations due to headache - observations from a university hospital in Germany.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Nocebo effects describe all negative outcomes for well-being brought about by negative health-related expectations. Media coverage of drug side effects can fuel nocebo effects and lead to increased symptom reports. This retrospective observational analysis of emergency reports at the neurological emergency room at University Hospital Essen, Germany, examines whether media communication about a cumulation of very rare cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) after COVID-19 vaccination with the AstraZeneca compound (ChAdOx-1 nCoV-19) was followed by an increase in weekly presentation rates of patients with the main complaint of headache, a symptom commonly occurring as a vaccination reaction but also communicated as a warning symptom for CVST. The rate of headache presentations increased by 171.7% during the five weeks after the first announcement of CVSTs in Germany on 11 March 2021, compared to the five weeks immediately prior. Furthermore, more young women sought consultation for headache, reflecting the communicated at-risk profile for CVST. The increased rate of headache presenters contributed to a 32.1% rise in total neurological emergency cases, causing an increased strain on the emergency facility after the side effect risk was publicized. We discuss a causal role of negative side effect expectations after vaccination with AstraZeneca as a driver for this increase. While transparent communication about benefits and potential side effects is crucial for vaccination acceptance, increased vigilance toward nocebo effects in health-related media communication is needed due to its potential harm to the individual and society, especially when emergency medical resources are stretched thin.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.