Evidence Hub

Two Patients with Schizophrenia Treated with Clozapine Developed Neutropenia After Receiving a COVID-19 Vaccine

Tomita T, Sakamoto Y, Saito M, Hashimoto K, Ono Y, Nakamura K

International medical case reports journal, 2022

4 citations

Abstract

Background: We observed two cases of patients with schizophrenia who were treated with clozapine (250mg/day and 275mg/day, respectively) and showed neutropenia after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine (BNT162b2).

Case presentation: Case 1 is a twenty-two year old woman with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She enrolled in Clozaril® Patient Monitoring Service in 2017 and had been taking clozapine for 4 years. She received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and developed neutropenia (1850/mm3 (37.9% of white blood cell 4880/mm3)) 6 days after the second vaccination, but her neutropenia self-resolved naturally. Case 2 is a twenty year old woman with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She enrolled in Clozaril® Patient Monitoring Service in 2020 and had been taking clozapine for 10 months. She received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and white blood cell and neutrocyte counts were below (3730/mm3 and 1440/mm3 (38.6%), respectively) the lower limits 3 days after the second vaccination. She had to discontinue clozapine according to the withdrawal definition (her neutrocyte count was 3), and her neutropenia self-resolved naturally.

Conclusion: Physicians need to have a strict follow-up protocol in place for patients after vaccination for COVID-19.

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a case report, done in people. Its evidence level is 5 of 5 (Very low · case / narrative / animal / in vitro / in silico). Case reports, narrative reviews, and animal, cell or computer-model studies give the weakest evidence for human health.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free