What’s the LISTEN Study on Post-Vaccination Syndrome All about? A Critical Look
There’s so much at stake with this study.
In November 2023, a team of scientists, mainly from Yale School of Medicine, dropped a bombshell study on the medRxiv preprint server: “Post-Vaccination Syndrome: A Descriptive Analysis of Reported Symptoms and Patient Experiences After Covid-19 Immunization.”
Major news outlets soon covered it. Forbes and MedPage Today titled it “Largest ‘Long Vax’ Study To Date On Post-Covid-19 Vaccination Syndrome.” and “Rare Syndrome After COVID Vaccines Described.” Needless to say, the anti-vaccine camps were thrilled, preaching that the scientific community had finally recognized their long-standing warnings.
Because this study was funded by the National Insitute of Health (NIH), it’s also indexed in PubMed, the leading biomedical literature database. This isn’t trivial, as PubMed indexing has to be earned. Studies from low-tier or even predatory journals are usually not indexed in PubMed.
So, let’s dissect what the study is all about and what it actually means in the broader context of vaccine safety. (If you just want to know the bottom line, feel free to skip to the last two paragraphs.)
