"Abstract
Atrial fibrillation (AF) has been described in COVID-19 patients... We systematically analyzed the reports of AF related to COVID-19 vaccines collected in the European pharmacovigilance database, EudraVigilance (EV), from 2020 to November 2022. We carried out descriptive and disproportionality analyses. Moreover, we performed a sensitivity analysis, excluding the reports describing other possible alternative AF causes (pericarditis, myocarditis, COVID-19, or other drugs that may cause/exacerbate AF). Overall, we retrieved 6226 reports, which represented only 0.3% of all those related to COVID-19 vaccines collected in EV during our study period... Reports were mainly related to tozinameran (54.04%), elasomeran (28.3%), and ChAdOx1-S (14.32%). The reported AF required patient hospitalization in 35% of cases and resulted in a life-threatening condition in 10% of cases...
1. Introduction
... Alongside well-known and moderate adverse events, i.e., fever, fatigue, and pain at the site of inoculation, cardiovascular events represent the most serious complications following COVID-19 vaccination. These include myocarditis and pericarditis, mainly associated with mRNA vaccines, while immune thrombocytopenia has been mainly related to viral vector ones. Another emerging rare cardiac adverse event following anti-COVID-19 immunization is atrial fibrillation (AF). It represents the most common type of heart arrhythmia, whose development is multifactorial and can be related to different comorbidities."
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