Jerusalem: The booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine is safe, according to a study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine who monitored heart measurements through Smart Watches.
researchers in Tel Aviv University equipped nearly 5,000 Israelis with smart watches and monitored their physiological parameters for two years. Of those monitored, 2,038 received the booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, allowing researchers to objectively compare measures before and after participants took the vaccine and confirm the vaccine’s safety.
The team also examined the safety of the booster by analyzing the medical records of 250,000 members of Maccabi Health Services anonymously. They were able to assess the safety of vaccines from three perspectives: subjectively, what the participant reports, objectively, what the watch detects, and clinically, what the doctor diagnoses.
“Smart watches were used to monitor a number of parameters, such as heart rate, heart activity variance, sleep quality, the number of daily steps, and more,” the professor said. and yamen from Tel Aviv University.
“We saw clear and significant changes after vaccine administration, such as an increase in heart rate compared to the pulse rate measured before vaccination, and then we saw a return to the participant.”base line, ie, pulse levels after vaccination returned to their previous levels after six days. Therefore, our study confirms the safety of the vaccine,” Yamin said.
The researchers said the most surprising finding was that the watches were more sensitive than the people they were monitoring. Many participants reported fatigue, headache, etc. after receiving the vaccine, and after two or three days they reported feeling normal and well, they said.
“In contrast, when examining their watches, we saw distinct changes in heart rate that continued for several more days,” Yamin said.
“There were also vaccinated participants who did not report any side effects and yet definitely experienced physiological changes, based on data from their smartwatches. In other words, we learned that smartwatches were more sensitive to changes in general feeling than participants themselves.”, he added.
In the medical literature, 25 unusual side effects attributed to the COVID vaccine have been reported, and researchers paid special attention to look for rare cases of inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis) and pericarditis.
The researchers checked the frequency of these unusual side effects among a quarter of a million Maccabi members and found no increase in serious incidents of any kind associated with vaccination.
