"Introduction
... Rhabdomyolysis is a pathological process of muscle cell injury that causes the release of cell products into the circulation, manifesting as muscle weakness, myalgia, and swelling. Markers of muscle damage like creatine kinase and myoglobinuria are frequently present. Severe cases might result in acute kidney injury (AKI), which may require dialysis [i.e., renal replacement therapy (RRT)] in rare cases...
Discussion
... Our patient was on three antipsychotic medications for more than ten years to treat her schizophrenia. Antipsychotic medications can increase the risk of rhabdomyolysis and neuroleptic malignant syndrome, so monitoring those patients' creatine kinase levels is important.
However, none of our patient's medications were associated with rhabdomyolysis. Also, she did not respond much to IV fluid hydration despite the high infusion rate. It is unclear why her rhabdomyolysis did not improve with hydration or why she continued to have myositis symptoms one week from the COVID-19 vaccine dose.
Her response to RRT and recent COVID-19 vaccine history showed that her rhabdomyolysis was likely COVID-19 vaccine-related.
Conclusions
This case described a 58-year-old woman who received the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine and developed severe rhabdomyolysis that was resolved on RRT with possible transient autoimmune activity. This case highlights the importance of early awareness of adverse effects following vaccine administration and careful history taking."
© Copyright 2022
Banamah et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.