The COVID-19 vaccine has a specific side effect that could be mistaken for cancer — it apparently could enlarge lymph nodes, according to The New York Times.
What’s going on?
The New York Times reports that some doctors have seen “more and more of these swollen nodes in recently immunized people.”
- The swelling often occurs on the same arm where you received the COVID-19 shot. And it can happen when you get other vaccinations for such issues as the flu.
Why does this matter?
Well, “lymph nodes show up as white blobs on mammograms and chest scans, resembling images that can indicate the spread of cancer from a tumor in the breast or elsewhere in the body,” according to The New York Times.
- “I am particularly eager to get the word out to all the patients undergoing surveillance after successful prior treatment of cancer,” Dr. Constance D. Lehman, an author of two journal articles on the issue, told The New York Times. “I can’t imagine the anxiety of getting the scan and hearing, ‘We found a node that is large. We don’t think it’s cancer but can’t tell,’ or worse, ‘We think it might be cancer.’”
- “We had started to see more patients in our breast imaging clinic with enlarged lymph nodes on mammography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. And we noticed they were coming to our clinic after a recent COVID-19 vaccination,” said Lehman, according to People magazine. “We talked with our colleagues in primary care and in our breast cancer specialty clinics and realized we needed a clear plan for management.”
Two quick notes
- This is anecdotal, but a health care worker told my mother about the risks of such a side effect when she received her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the Utah County Department of Health at the end of February.
- Also, this is something some doctors have reported about the vaccine. This does not mean everyone who got the vaccine experienced this side effect.
More side effects
Experts have said for weeks now that the COVID-19 vaccine might include some side effects, which I previously wrote about.
- The side effects include “pain, potentially fatigue, and a low-grade fever,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, a member of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
There’s a good amount of people across the United States who said they saw a rash on their arms after getting the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, too, according to CBS Minnesota.