Nanoparticles in vaccines against covid-19 do not cause irreversible side effects

You have asked us about a video circulating in WhatsApp claiming that vaccines against covid-19 contain nanoparticles causing irreversible side effects -although it does not specify which- and that zeolite, coconut charcoal and dimethyl sulfoxide, known as DMSO, help mitigating the adverse reactions due to its capacity of “trapping ingredients” harmful for health. Both statements are FALSE. Currently, the only approved vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 using nanoparticles are those of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. These are lipid capsules (fatty pellets) protecting the messenger RNA until arriving at the cell. Up to now, no side effect produced by the mRNA vaccines against covid-19 are irreversible, according to the pharmacosurveillance reports. Zeolite and coconut charcoal -with absorbing properties- and DMSO -a type of solvent- do not belong to the recommended treatments to combat the side effects of covid-19 vaccine.

"If you believe that one brand or another (of the vaccine against covid-19) is going to be better, you are really cheated because all these injections have nanocomponents with irreversible side effects"

The video starts showing an article of the digital newspaper El Confidencial entitled “The Pentagon develops invisible particles to control your brain”, which explains a project from the United States Department of Defense based on nanoparticles and magnetic fields which has the goal of monitoring and controlling the 80,000 neurons of the brain. It then goes on different subjects in a confusing manner (presence of metals in vaccines and implantation of nanosensors in the organism) till ending mentioning that vaccines against covid-19 have nanoparticles causing irreversible effects, although without mentioning which. In reality, the news that the US Government is investigating how the brain works is not new. In 2013, then president Barack Obama announced an investment of 100 million dollars (about 82 million euros) for the BRAIN programme, "designed to revolutionise" our understanding of this nerve centre. BRAIN involves DARPA participation, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency, which specialises, among other things, in neurotechnology.

Nanoparticles, however, are used in Medicine mainly as “vehicles carrying drugs to different cell types, in a selective manner”, Adelaida Sarukhan, an immunologist and scientific writer at the Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal, in Catalan), explains to Verificat. From all the vaccines that have been currently approved against covid-19, only Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna incorporate nanotechnology in their composition. “They use lipid-based nanoparticles (fats) to avoid their degradation in the extracellular space and facilitate the entry of mRNA [a molecule that degrades very fast} inside the cell', continues Sarukhan. In this way, it penetrates into the cells and teaches them to manufacture the S protein, present in SARS-CoV-2, so that the immune system recognises this virus and can generate antibodies avoiding the development of covid-19. Once inside the cell, the fat nanoparticles fuse with the cell membrane and release their contents, says Lluís Montoliu, a biotechnologist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in his blog.

Paracetamol to treat the side effects

Sarukhan points out that the irreversible effects that nanoparticles can cause are directly related with their composition. But “vaccines against covid-19 use nanoparticles based on molecules that are not toxic to our body”, Sarukhan underlies, which disproves the WhatsApp video theory. In the same direction, the Spanish government's May pharmacosurveillance report, prepared in coordination with the European authorities and reporting adverse responses to vaccines, reports no irreversible reactions of any kind in relation to mRNA vaccines. The most frequent side effects reported by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are discomfort at the injection site, headache, fever and body discomfort. The main recommended treatment for these is paracetamol (acetaminophen).

Neither zeolite, coconut charcoal nor DMSO, mentioned in the video, appear on the lists of medical indications for mitigating reactions. The only vaccines that have reported irreversible side effects are those developed by AstraZeneca/Oxford and Janssen, designed as viral vector vaccines, after their administration was associated with the death of some people who subsequently suffered thrombi.