Within an hour of receiving a covid vaccination in November 2020, Utah preschool teacher Brianne Dressen felt pins and needles through her arms and legs. In the medical odyssey that followed, she suffered double vision, chronic nausea, brain fog, and profound weakness. Once a rock climber, she became a couch potato.
Although Dressen’s symptoms were rare in that season of hundreds of millions of covid vaccinations, they were common enough to draw the attention of a National Institutes of Health neuroscientist named Avindra Nath, who examined Dressen and more than 30 other people with a similar syndrome in 2021. He recommended Dressen take steroids and antibodies — treatments that saved her life, she said.
And then, according to emails reviewed by KFF Health News, Nath said he couldn’t help anymore. His clinical study was ending. He directed the patients to seek local help. But, Dressen said, there wasn’t any.
Nath declined to speak to KFF Health News for this article. The FDA searched international vaccine safety databases for small-fiber neuropathy, one of the most common symptoms he mentioned in a write-up of the patients, and found it was less prevalent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated patients, said Peter Marks, who led the FDA division responsible for vaccines until Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F …