Myocarditis was noted in connection with covid in 2020, and while there were some concerning numbers quoted in studies, it did not seem as though athletes were actually collapsing. When collegiate sports resumed in late 2020, all appeared to be well.
From an academic point of view, there was active research on what covid did to athletes’ hearts. A PubMed search using keywords “athlete covid myocarditis” yields 89 articles. Of these, approximately 20 are primary research and have specific information regarding how many athletes were tested, how many had abnormal results, and how long it took the athletes to recover.
However, something peculiar happens when the search term “vaccine” is added to the PubMed search: zero articles.
There appear to be zero studies that gather data to answer the question: what do covid vaccines do to athletes’ hearts?
Google Scholar is an alternative to PubMed, an academic search engine that produces many more results than PubMed, although it also finds less specific material. So, repeating the search “athlete covid myocarditis vaccine” yields over 1000 results. One of these is a case report:
However, none of the studies appear to be large analyses such as the careful work on athletes, covid, and heart health that were done in 2020/21 (like the huge NCAA PAC-10 study - this one).
There is one interesting exception to the seeming neglect of research on Covid vaccines and athletes — Batatinha et al 2022, a tiny study of just 18 participants, comparing 12 Pfizer vaccine recipients to 6 controls in exercise testing. This study actually found statistically significant differences between the 12 vaccinated and 6 unvaccinated participants: elevated heart rates during exercise, and elevated norepinephrine during exercise.
These are surprising, concerning results that should have prompted urgent, in-depth research by sports and athletics associations. This is potentially a major issue.
The article, which first appeared in December 2021, has been cited 9 times. One is a letter in which the authors respond to a critic, where they mention a third abnormality which did not reach statistical significance - reduced cardiac stroke volume. They suggest that bigger and better studies are needed on the matter.
Did the NCAA, the International Olympic Committee, or FIFA do the bigger studies?
Did anyone?
Hi Dr. Benoit. So happy to see docs asking these questions. I'm not Substack-savvy enough to PM you, but you may be interested in our freespeechinmedicine.com conference in Nova Scotia at end of October. We would love to have you. You can get a sense of what my wife Julie and I are about at pairodocs.substack.com