Vaccines and Arthritis flare ups

Guzzle

Hi I am just enquiring about the relation between covid vaccines and Arthritis flare ups . I have not had a really bad disabling flare up for over two and half years from when I was first struck down and now for the last four weeks I have been off work due to a severe flare up I have had 3 jabs and been I touch with my Rheumatologist and been put on a small dose of steriods and was told there are some connections between vaccines and flare ups is there any more information on this please

jeddison1985

Hi @Guzzle firstly let me welcome you to the forum I hope you find the information and support you are after from our wonderful community.

I can see from your post that you have been experiencing a flare up since having a COVID vaccine. Ordinarily my first port of call would have been to direct you to your GP or Rheumatologist but you indicate you already spoken to your specialist.

The site is full of information and this is a question that has been raised previously. I cannot give any clinical advice but wanted to direct you to our up to date information on COVID vaccines and common questions, to hope it helps.

https://www.versusarthritis.org/covid-19-updates/

https://www.versusarthritis.org/covid-19-updates/vaccines-for-covid-19-your-questions-answered/

Please feel free to search the forum for others with similar experiences and I am sure that some of our community will be able to help offer some useful suggestions.

Take care and I hope you get some answers soon.

Thanks

Joe

dee1p

Male, 62 years old, fit & healthy

on the topic of Covid and OA, 2 years ago i had x-ray taken to show OA of both hips, right worse then left and end-plate osteophytes of L4/L5.

But having got infected twice with Covid virus, March 2019 and then again Christmas 2020, I feel OA has progressively got worse.

I’ve had Pfizer vaccine shot (x2) + Booster.

Whether it’s long-covid or the vaccines I don’t know, but it’s got worse since this whole Covid thing broke.

range-of-motion is worrying. Losing more of it with each passing week.

Is there are link with Covid infection and deterioration of hip joint ?

Anna

Hello @dee1p and welcome to the online community,

Your osteoarthritis symptoms have got a lot worse since you’ve had the Pfizer vaccines and booster and you are wondering if there is any link between the Covid infection and deterioration of the hip joint.

This subject has been raised before by several other members, and there are a couple of threads that you might be interested in reading:

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/56126/oa-pain-and-covid-infection

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/56168/pfizer-booster-causing-flare-up

You’ll see at the end of the last thread that Yvonne Harrison, an Administrator for the online community, is collecting information from people who have experienced reaction to the vaccine and will pass it on to Versus Arthritis. If you’d like to contribute your experience, you are asked to email her at community@versusarthritis.org.

Do have a look round the forum as there are discussions on this subject that you may like to join in.

Best wishes,

Anna ( Mod)

Arthuritis

@Guzzle @jeddison1985 Here is an NRAS video where at the 15:00 mark Prof Stefan Siebert talks about the known flare ups and vaccination. However flare ups imply that it eventually comes down, but as Prof Siebert says, they are difficult to treat

https://youtu.be/PlswEXDPEro

In France there have been documented cases where the autoimmune condition has been triggered or made worse. This was in a published peer reviewed major scientific journal. I posted about this somewhere in the same thread.

However rheumatologists in the UK are extremely wary of saying anything against vaccination as its become so politicised and people forget that there are no medicines without risks, including vaccines, which as immune stimulants, are the exact opposite of the immune suppressants we take.

My own nhs rheumatologist did confirm my condition did seem to have been triggered into a chronic autoimmune disease by the vaccines, not specifically covid. (I had flu vaccines). All vaccines work by hyper stimulating the immune system, the one thing you don’t want if its already on the edge and needs calming down, as was seen with people infected with covid, needing steroids to avoid serious lung damage. In addition 2 other Rheumies I saw confirmed the same relationship between vaccines & flares as does Prof Siebert.

However, don’t despair, you are not imagining things. Very few clinicians unless they are research clinicians keep up with the latest in their own field, they are busy turning the handle of routine treatment. So when they say they have “never heard/read of something”, it literally means THEY have not been keeping up with research literature in their own field, not that it does not exist. However only a few are humble enough to add “it may exist, I just don’t know”. They rely on their colleagues talking about something and then it becomes a “heard of” fact.

[GPs I have found, are even worse, and often don’t know OA & RA are different things, and according to my NHS rheumy, never had a patient referral on time as required by NICE guidelines, only getting referrals when its very late. I don’t know of any NHS GP that has time to keep up with NICE & research, almost all rely on what they remember learning decades ago in med school, and human memory being what it is, only frequently used memories are retained, so rare conditions missed.

Private GPs have the luxury of time, fewer patients and the need to retain customers, so in my experience, they DO keep up with research, and over the past couple of years I’ve seen some good ones).