{"doi":"10.3389/fimmu.2022.851620","title":"Increased Interleukin 18-Dependent Immune Responses Are Associated With Myopericarditis After COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination","abstract":"Myocarditis and myopericarditis may occur after COVID-19 vaccination with an incidence of two to twenty cases per 100,000 individuals, but underlying mechanisms related to disease onset and progression remain unclear. Here, we report a case of myopericarditis following the first dose of the mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine in a young man who had a history of mild COVID-19 three months before vaccination. The patient presented with chest pain, elevated troponin I level, and electrocardiogram abnormality. His endomyocardial biopsy revealed diffuse CD68 + cell infiltration. We characterized the immune profile of the patient using multiplex cytokine assay and flow cytometry analysis. Sex-matched vaccinated individuals and healthy individuals were used as controls. IL-18 and IL-27, Th1-type cytokines, were highly increased in the patient with COVID-19 vaccine-related myopericarditis compared with vaccinated controls who experienced no cardiac complications. In the patient, circulating NK cells and T cells showed an activated phenotype and mRNA profile, and monocytes expressed increased levels of IL-18 and its upstream NLRP3 inflammasome. We found that recombinant IL-18 administration into mice caused mild cardiac dysfunction and activation of NK cells and T cells in the hearts, similar to the findings in the patient with myopericarditis after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. Collectively, myopericarditis following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination may be associated with increased IL-18-mediated immune responses and cardiotoxicity.","journal":"Frontiers in Immunology","year":2022,"id":245992,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":49,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9491,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":497798,"name":"Nisha A. Gilotra","orcid":"0000-0002-4511-8008","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":848044,"name":"Megan Kay Wood","orcid":"0000-0001-5176-8210","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":882584,"name":"David Matthew Hughes","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":465559,"name":"Monica V. Talor","orcid":"0000-0002-8275-5698","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":678940,"name":"Jana Lovell","orcid":"0000-0001-5086-8367","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250757,"name":"Aaron M. Milstone","orcid":"0000-0001-8498-8682","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":235990,"name":"Charles Steenbergen","orcid":"0000-0001-6654-325X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":465563,"name":"Daniela Čiháková","orcid":"0000-0002-8713-2860","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":465557,"name":"Taejoon Won","orcid":"0000-0001-5968-2016","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":72,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:23:43.438539Z","pmid":"35251049","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}