FRANKFURT, March 12 (Reuters) - The European Union's drugs
regulator is investigating whether any of the three COVID-19
vaccines approved in the bloc might be linked to a blood
clotting deficiency that can cause internal bleeding.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Friday that
several cases of immune thrombocytopenia, a lack of platelets in
the blood that can lead to bleeding and bruising, had been
reported under its vaccine safety monitoring process.
"It is not yet clear whether there is a causal association
between vaccination and the reports of immune thrombocytopenia,"
EMA said.
The agency said it would assess reports of the condition in
people who had received the Pfizer/BioNTech ,
AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccines.
European vaccination programmes have been upset in the last
two weeks by reports that recipients of the AstraZeneca
inoculation have suffered blood clots.
EMA has said there is no indication that the events were
caused by the vaccination, a view that was echoed by the World
Health Organisation on Friday. AstraZeneca also said it had
found no evidence of increased risk of deep-vein
thrombosis.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Kevin Liffey)