“The bottom line is that the study does not provide definitive evidence that COVID-19 vaccination broadly reduces cardiovascular risk.”
— Dr. Joseph Varon, IMA President and Chief Medical Officer
The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a national coalition of more than 12,000 physicians, researchers, and healthcare professionals, today urged caution when interpreting a recently published study in JAMA Internal Medicine that suggests the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine is associated with a reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events among U.S. veterans.
While the pro-mRNA camp is promoting the study as evidence of cardiovascular benefits from COVID-19 vaccination, the study itself is not a randomized clinical trial, but rather merely an observational study.
“We cannot let politics drive the needed research and reconciliation needed from the COVID response era,” said Dr. Joseph Varon, President and Chief Medical Officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. “We need statistically accurate studies about what exactly is happening to patients who received mRNA and what future population impacts we should anticipate. What we don’t need are non-statistically valid samples which seem more focused on driving a narrative than finding the truth.”
Issues with the JAMA study include:
- It’s not a randomized clinical trial, but rather an observational study, and therefore cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship.
- The study population consisted of older veterans with substantial differences in prior vaccination histories and healthcare utilization patterns. Such differences may introduce residual confounding factors that cannot be fully eliminated through statistical adjustments.
- Statistically significant benefits were primarily observed in individuals older than 75 years, raising questions about the applicability of these findings to the broader population.
- The study reports substantially larger reductions in all-cause cardiovascular events than in COVID-19-associated cardiovascular events and attributes this discrepancy to a hypothetical burden of undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infections. This is a speculative explanation not directly supported by the data presented.
- The study found absolute risk reduction of only approximately two cardiovascular events per 10,000 vaccinated individuals over an eight-month period, a benefit the authors themselves describe as modest.
- Despite drawing conclusions about cardiovascular benefits, the investigators did not evaluate potential vaccine-related adverse events. Any meaningful assessment of risk and benefit requires examination of both potential benefits and potential harms.
“The bottom line is that the study does not provide definitive evidence that COVID-19 vaccination broadly reduces cardiovascular risk,” said Dr. Varon. “The findings suggest, at most, a weak association in a highly selected population of older veterans and should not be overstated or generalized beyond the data.”
The Independent Medical Alliance continues to advocate for rigorous scientific inquiry, transparency in data interpretation, and evidence-based recommendations that accurately communicate both the strengths and limitations of emerging medical research.
