Swollen lymph nodes one year after the anti-covid vaccine. It’s normal?

I’m 28 and I’ve had three doses of the vaccine, all with different vaccines. A few days after the last dose, some enlarged lymph nodes appeared, which still remain after about a year: one in the groin (painful and annoying), the other under the left side and the others in different parts of the body. Will they never go away? I have had blood tests three times and no problems have emerged.

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It is completely normal for lymph nodes to swell for a short time after a vaccine (of any type). The lymph nodes, in fact, are the seat of the immune response, where the production of antibodies takes place. We observe the appearance of enlarged lymph nodes usually near the inoculation site, more frequently in children: in most cases the immune response begins in the seven days following the vaccination and after this period the lymph nodes tend to return to normal size.

A persistence of swollen lymph nodes for so long, as the reader reports, is therefore unusual and it is correct that the doctor visited the patient to make sure that they were indeed lymph nodes, whether they were small or large, painful or not. In the immediately following phase, it is necessary to order blood tests, to make sure that there is no infection in progress. And, to follow, the execution of an ultrasound examination to investigate the characteristics of the lymph nodes and proceed, if necessary, to a lymph node biopsy. In general, 80% of cases of lymphadenopathy are benign, often of an infectious nature (more or less easily treatable), while about 15% are linked to tumor diseases.

*Carmelo Carlo-Stella is Head of the Lymphoma and Myeloma Section of the IRCCS Humanitas Clinical Institute and Full Professor of Hematology at Humanitas University.