The NIH today announced that a clinical trial is underway to study whether people who are highly allergic or have a mast cell disorder are more likely to develop an allergic reaction to the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
Reports of severe allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines have made headlines since the rollout to the public began. Still, such anaphylactic reactions are rare, with only a few cases per million doses. To put things in perspective, tens of thousands of Americans end up in emergency rooms annually with severe allergic reactions.
The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is sponsoring and funding the news study, which is enrolling 3,400 adults ages 18 to 69 years at up to 35 academic allergy-research centers nationwide.
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