“Context: Myocarditis in adolescents has been diagnosed clinically following the administration of the second dose of an mRNA vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Objective: To examine the autopsy microscopic cardiac findings in adolescent deaths that occurred shortly following administration of the second Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 dose to determine if the myocarditis described in these instances has the typical histopathology of myocarditis.
Results: The microscopic examination revealed features resembling a catecholamine-induced injury, not typical myocarditis pathology.
Conclusions: The myocardial injury seen in these postvaccine hearts is different from typical myocarditis and has an appearance most closely resembling a catecholamine-mediated stress (toxic) cardiomyopathy.
Discussion: … Toxic myocarditis is an etiologic classification involving direct myocardial injury by various drugs or substances. Although variable, the histologic features consist of 2 main patterns: an early stage with foci of solely necrotic/damaged myocytes and the later phase of ‘myocarditis.’ Toxic myocarditis usually indicates inflammatory stages of catecholamine-induced myocardial injury.”
© 2010 College of American Pathologists. Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the society's permission. Source: https://meridian.allenpress.com/aplm/pages/permissions