The images are disturbing, even alarming. In several videos posted online and viewed millions of times on social media, two separated American women appear to be experiencing episodes of tremors and involuntary body movements.
There is no direct connection between the women, except that both had received COVID-19 vaccines shortly before the onset of symptoms, a fact that some have related to the onset of these tremors. But scientists say there is another valid explanation for what we see in the images.
Although there are absolutely no researchers think it is not the contents of COVID-19 vaccines that cause shocks and seizures.
Instead, these viral videos may represent a rare and misunderstood medical condition called functional neurological disorder (FND), a neuropsychiatric disorder that is thought to be triggered by various stimuli, including physical or emotional events, injuries, procedures. doctors and sometimes even injecting a needle.
“Some people with FND have a greater awareness of their body and increase the state of arousal and threat, which can hijack the normal neural networks that control voluntary movements,” says neurologist David Perez of Massachusetts General Hospital ( MGH).
“FND teaches us a lot about the complexities of the human brain.”
Functional neurological disorder, sometimes also known as conversion disorder, cannot be definitively diagnosed when watching videos, but nevertheless the types of body control problems seen (limb weakness, gait problems, movements tremors, tremors, and facial spasms) are symptoms of FND.
For this reason, the American company FND issued a press release in January shortly after the videos began to draw attention on social media, noting that the clinical features of FND were consistent with what appeared in the images.
“We would expect FND to develop in some people after vaccination due to a combination of increased stress due to the pandemic, feelings of uncertainty about the vaccine and normal transient physical symptoms and discomfort after vaccination,” wrote the FND Society.
Now, to make a similar point and help foster public understanding of FND, Pérez and his co-authors have written a new comment on JAMA Neurology, noting that the videos look like potential episodes of FND, which, if true, could have been caused by vaccine injections, but probably not by the vaccines themselves.
“Precipitating factors, despite being close to the development of symptoms, are not directly caused by vaccine substances in the same way that, for example, Neisseria meningitidis it’s the cause of meningitis, ”the researchers explain.
“Instead, factors such as expectations, beliefs, increased body attention, arousal, and emotional threat / processing play an important mechanistic role in the pathophysiology of FND.”
It’s a particularly important topic right now, researchers urge, because sometimes videos like this attract thousands of views and can also be shared by those who advocate conspiracy theories and beliefs against vaccination.
In the face of a modern health crisis like COVID-19, it is important to raise awareness of the strong possibility that these videos show rare cases of FND.
“The spread of these videos could fuel the hesitation by giving an overly simplistic impression of the possible links between the vaccine and the main neurological symptoms,” Pérez says.
“Instead, they are symptoms of a real brain-based disorder that is at the intersection of neurology and psychiatry.”
So far, U.S. federal health authorities, such as the CDC, have not had much to say about the potential role of FND in videos like this, noting primarily that the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines are usually “mild.” and moderate and disappear quickly “.
This is an important clarification that the public needs to hear, but it doesn’t go far enough to educate people about what FND really is, researchers say, especially when viral videos with terrifying-looking shock symptoms reach millions of views. . by the people claiming the vaccines are directly responsible.
“The public may falsely perceive the lack of direct messages that disease control and prevention centers are not adequately monitoring for adverse symptoms or, even worse, hiding them,” the researchers explain.
“We need to explain in a transparent and non-judgmental manner the nature of the FND, including that these symptoms are real, but not the direct result of the effects of the toxic vaccine.”
The findings are reported in JAMA Neurology.