A group of scientists has issued a warning after linking hepatitis B vaccines to disturbing musculoskeletal adverse events.
The warning was issued in response to a large-scale pharmacovigilance study led by Dr. Weiguo Bian of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University in China.
The study was in collaboration with researchers from Shanghai and Fujian.
The researchers investigated links between hepatitis B vaccination and musculoskeletal adverse events (AEs).
The team used the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.
The study analyzed 76,887 VAERS reports from between 1990 and 2024.
The researchers sought to identify signals of tendon fibrosis, fasciitis, myofascitis, and osteoarthritis—adverse events potentially linked to aluminum adjuvants in hepatitis B vaccines.
The authors aimed to provide a scientific basis for vaccine safety evaluations amid persistent concerns regarding rare but serious post-vaccination complications.
This retrospective signal detection study employed disproportionality analysis using four methodologies:
Reporting Odds Ratio (ROR) Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) Bayesian Confidence Propagation Neural Network (BCPNN) Multi-item Gamma Poisson Shrinker (MGPS)
The authors filtered all reports in which the hepatitis B vaccine was the primary suspect drug