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Review
. 2022 May 9;9(5):150.
doi: 10.3390/jcdd9050150.

Blood Pressure Increase following COVID-19 Vaccination: A Systematic Overview and Meta-Analysis

Fabio Angeli  1   2 , Gianpaolo Reboldi  3 , Monica Trapasso  4 , Gabriella Santilli  3 , Martina Zappa  1 , Paolo Verdecchia  5
Affiliations
Review

Blood Pressure Increase following COVID-19 Vaccination: A Systematic Overview and Meta-Analysis

Fabio Angeli et al. J Cardiovasc Dev Dis. .

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines proved a strong clinical efficacy against symptomatic or moderate/severe COVID-19 and are considered the most promising approach for curbing the pandemic. However, some questions regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines have been recently raised. Among adverse events to vaccines and despite a lack of signal during phase III clinical trials, an increase in blood pressure (BP) after COVID-19 vaccination has been reported as a potential adverse reaction. We systematically analyze this topic and undertook a meta-analysis of available data to estimate the proportion of patients with abnormal BP or raise in BP after vaccination. Six studies entered the final analysis. Overall, studies accrued 357,387 subjects with 13,444 events of abnormal or increased BP. After exclusion of outlier studies, the pooled estimated proportion of abnormal/increased BP after vaccination was 3.20% (95% CI: 1.62-6.21). Proportions of cases of stage III hypertension or hypertensive urgencies and emergencies was 0.6% (95% CI: 0.1% to 5.1%). In conclusion, abnormal BP is not rare after COVID-19 vaccination, but the basic mechanisms of this phenomenon are still unclear and require further research.

Keywords: Ad26.COV2.S; BNT162b2; COVID-19; CVnCoV; ChAdOx1nCoV-19; Gam-COVID-Vac; NVX-CoV2373; adverse drug reaction; blood pressure; hypertension; mRNA-1273; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Criteria used for selection of studies.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Proportions of increased BP after vaccination [25,35,36,38,40,41].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Proportions of increased BP after vaccination, after the exclusion of outlier studies [25,35,36,38,40,41].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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