Former Pussycat Doll Jessica Sutta stared dancing before she learned to read. Florida-born, she enrolled in the Miami City Ballet age 14.
And at 22, she joined the iconic burlesque group alongside the likes of Nicole Scherzinger, Ashley Roberts and Kimberly Wyatt.
Two decades on, at 42-year-old, Sutta has been unable to play with her three-year-old son M.J., let alone get on stage, for more than three years.
And that’s because she’s been battling a life-changing vaccine-related injury that caused debilitating muscle spasms, tremors and fatigue.
Her symptoms came on within days of receiving her second dose of the Moderna vaccine to protect against Covid in December 2021.
‘I woke up with a muscle spasm in my right rib that just would not get out,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘It felt like a knife inside was burning. It wrapped around my rib cage and up and down my spine, and it felt like I was on the brink of death.’
The spasms, which she still endures to this day, then gave way to tremors in her legs and involuntary head jerks that have since subsided.
But she still feels as though her body has been ‘completely hijacked’.
Jessica Sutta (far right), a former member of pop-girl group the Pussycat Dolls, spoke about her experience with a vaccine-induced autoimmune disease exclusively with the Daily Mail
Seven months ago, Sutta was diagnosed with vaccine-induced lupus, a rare autoimmune reaction, which can cause skin rashes, joint pain, fatigue, and muscle pain
To make matters worse, while her fellow Pussycat Dolls former bandmates have been accepting of her experience, she has now been dubbed an anti-vaxxer for speaking out.
‘I’m willing to risk my reputation so this doesn’t happen to anyone else,’ she said.
‘There are many people in the industry way, bigger than me with a bigger outreach, with vaccine injuries. But they won’t speak out. And for me, I just couldn’t hold my tongue.’
She added that she does not consider herself anti-vaccine.
‘I do believe in the technology in hindsight, right? But I will not blindly trust the medical system ever again after what happened to me. I’m not “anti” anything. I’m just anti being sick,’ she said.
She hopes that by speaking out she can empower others to get the medical care they need.
Sutta described how for a year she was left bed-bound, unable to support her new son and never able to dance for longer than a few minutes.
Then seven months ago, she was diagnosed with vaccine-induced lupus – an autoimmune condition that is caused by the body’s response to the vaccine going haywire and producing cells that attack healthy tissue.
Jessica, far right, said the experience caused her severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and revisiting those early years is still difficult due to the overwhelming memories
Like other forms of lupus, the body endures widespread inflammation that inflicts damage on tissues and organs.
This inflammation explains many of her symptoms, including skin rashes, joint pain, fatigue and muscle pain.
‘I still get the muscle spasms here and there,’ Sutta said. ‘Things have gotten a little bit better through therapies and steroids, but I don’t want to live my life like that. I just want my body back. I want to be able to dance again.’
Vaccine-induced lupus is extremely rare, with fewer than 100 reported cases worldwide.
It has been documented after various vaccines, including those for hepatitis B, influenza, HPV, and others, though the exact mechanisms to explain the link is not yet fully understood.
Vaccines activate our immune systems to fight an infection.
But in some people, this response triggers immune cells to attack healthy cells, which in turn causes inflammation and the production of autoantibodies.
These then mistakenly target and attack the body’s own tissues instead of foreign invaders like viruses or bacteria.
This immune response may contribute to lupus-like symptoms in people who are genetically or biologically predisposed to autoimmune conditions.
‘Any physical activity I pay for the next day, and my body just flares, and it’s very disappointing because I love to dance. It’s who I am,’ Sutta said.
Immediately after second Covid vaccination she felt the effect on her appetite, dropping the 50lbs she had gained while pregnant with M.J., making her a slight 115 lbs.
‘It felt like my body was eating itself,’ she said.
‘And you can imagine living in Hollywood, you lose a lot of weight after you have a baby, and it’s, like, the best thing to everyone.’
Jessica, pictured at the 2008 Ultra Music Festival in Miami, said that after her second vaccine she lost 50 pounds. She described feeling like her body was ‘eating itself’
Sutta, seeking relief from her pain late one night, discovered a roundtable discussion led by Senator Ron Johnson featuring testimonies from those affected by vaccine injuries. One of the speakers, Brianne Dressin, shared a story that closely mirrored Sutta’s own experience
Her son Michael Jesse (MJ for short), was just six months old at the time, and Sutta often felt like she couldn’t show up for him.
‘There’s times where I can’t lift him. I can’t put him in the car, I need someone to help me. There’s days that I can’t get out of bed, and I’m on the heating pad, and there’s so much mom guilt that just overflows from my entire being,’ she said.
She added that the experience has left her with intense post-traumatic stress disorder and she finds revisiting those early years difficult, as the memories are overwhelming.
Doctors initially believed Sutta had multiple sclerosis, which causes the immune system to attack the protective covering of nerves. This triggers spinal cord inflammation, possibly explaining her body-wide nerve pain.
She claims, however, that doctors dismissed her concerns about a potential link with the Covid vaccine she had received days earlier when tests came back inconclusive.
‘There were times, especially in the beginning, where I thought I was going to die, and there were no answers. I was being gaslit by doctors that really had no clue why this could occur,’ she alleged.
It was not until March 2022 that a neurologist officially diagnosed her with a vaccine injury, which has no treatment plan.
‘My heart sank,’ Sutta said. ‘I didn’t want it to be that.’
To this day, she feels angry about how little investigation there has been into severe adverse reactions like hers.
While trying to raise awareness Sutta connected with vaccine-skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr during his 2024 presidential campaign, for which she helped as a fundraiser.
Many people in the medical community and public fear speaking out about cases of vaccine-related injuries in case they earn the label of anti-vaccine. RFK Jr is one of the lone voices on the topic.
In the largest ever Covid vaccine study last year, doctors linked the shots to small increases in heart, blood, and neurological disorders.
But still, the investigative team reported the absolute risk of developing myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammatory conditions that affect the heart) is estimated to be around 1 to 10 cases per million doses, while the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome (which affects muscle control) is approximately 1-2 cases per million doses.
Autoimmune conditions are also complex and multifactorial, driven by a combination of genetics and environmental risk factors.
Meanwhile chronic conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia (a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain), tend to come on gradually and have overlapping causes, making them harder to link conclusively to vaccines.
Sutta advocates for informed consent, a principle highlighted by HHS Secretary RFK, ensuring patients understand the full risks, benefits, and alternatives before undergoing medical procedures
Sutta, pictured in 2024, Sutta shared that despite having better days, she no longer feels like herself
Dr Harlan Krumholz, director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation and a lead investigator behind that 2024 study, said: ‘Both things can be true. [Vaccines] can save millions of lives, and there can be a small number of people who’ve been adversely affected.’
For Sutta, sharing her story publicly has connected her with thousands of people who have experienced tremors, muscle pain, and other symptoms since receiving their Covid vaccines.
‘As scary as it was to speak out, I kind of just put my career aside and put humanity first,’ she said.
‘We’re forgetting about this community suffering in silence or were ostracized from society because of adverse reactions to this technology.’
She added that she is ‘not trying to create vaccine hesitancy’.
Throughout her ordeal, Sutta was determined not to let her injury keep her from making music.
Writing has offered her some solace and she recently recorded an original song about her injury and participated in a film called Follow the Silenced that shares the stories of vaccine injuries.
A recent study by Yale University researchers has also provided her with a sense of optimism.
It identified ‘post-vaccination syndrome’ in some patients, linked to symptoms like brain fog, dizziness and exercise intolerance.
Post-vaccination syndrome may activate dormant Epstein–Barr virus and disrupt immune function. Patients also had elevated coronavirus proteins in their blood long after vaccination, potentially causing chronic inflammation.
Though this does not align precisely with Sutta’s diagnosis, the Yale study indicates that researchers are now taking lasting immune dysfunction after the vaccine seriously, providing her and others with validation and hope of potential future treatments.
The study’s findings show that persistent symptoms after Covid vaccination may be linked to immune system dysregulation, which could have implications for vaccine-induced lupus.
Both conditions involve abnormal immune activation, with symptoms like fatigue, joint pain, and neurological issues resembling autoimmune disorders.
By engaging the vaccine-injured community, she aims to draw attention from scientists to this critical issue
If scientists can pinpoint immune markers that set post-vaccination syndrome apart from other conditions, it could lead to better diagnostic tools and treatments for vaccine-induced lupus.
‘We need the medical attention now, so I’m so grateful to the Yale scientists for doing this study because it is so important, and we need to get all the scientists’ heads together to find a cure for these very complex injuries,’ Sutta said.
She advocates for ‘informed consent’, a principle recently emphasized by HHS Secretary RFK, which ensures patients fully understand the risks, benefits, and alternatives before agreeing to medical procedures or treatments.
The symptoms reported by Covid vaccine recipients are rare but it is difficult to pinpoint a precise figure of sufferers because reporting is voluntary and can depend on individual states’ public health systems.
For instance, a global review found 258 reported cases of nerve-related conditions after vaccination, with Guillain-Barré syndrome and Parsonage-Turner syndrome (which causes sudden shoulder pain and weakness) being the most common.
Hundreds of people have also experienced mild to severe tremors that can impede one’s ability to walk.
In a clinical trial for Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, tremors occurred in fewer than 1 in 100 people.
After searching online in the early hours on night to distract herself from pain, Sutta stumbled upon a roundtable discussion led by Sen Ron Johnson, featuring testimonies from the vaccine-injured.
One speaker, Brianne Dressen, shared a story that Sutta realized ‘was exactly what was going on with me’ so she reached out on Instagram to offer her support.
She said connecting with other sufferers has helped her enormously.
‘It changed my life completely because [I found out] I got lucky. There are a lot of people with wheelchairs that can’t walk ever again. [Cases of] myocarditis, pericarditis, people that have lost their children – very, very healthy, fit children – six days after the shot. Just die of a heart attack, and that’s not normal.’
Nailing down a diagnosis and connecting with other vaccine-injured people also opened to door to different treatments.
‘Steroids have been a key component to really putting the flares at bay,’ she said. ‘[But] I hate the way they make me feel.’
Steroids can bring about mood swings, irritability, anxiety, weight gain and insomnia.
Though typically effective at managing nerve pain, steroids can also cause physical symptoms troublesome for a star in the public eye, such as swelling and puffiness in the face (sometimes called ‘moon face’).
Sutta said her husband (pictured) is a great dad and a helpful partner who has supported her both in her recovery and her advocacy for vaccine-injured people
Sutta has also tried high-dose vitamin C, known for its immune-boosting properties; glutathione, a powerful antioxidant; and NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), which supports energy production down to the cellular level.
‘I cannot get massages at all; chiropractic, as long as it’s gentle because it just feels like my body is a thousand years old,’ she said.
‘It’s not like back in the day when I was in the Pussycat Dolls, I would go see my chiropractor to get my neck aligned.’
She also takes hydroxychloroquine, which is sometimes prescribed for autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
Monitoring her diet has been crucial in helping to manage symptoms, and Sutta avoids gluten and sugar – which she finds difficult because she loves Skittles.
‘But even after all of this, even though I’m having a better day today, I don’t feel like myself anymore,’ she said. ‘My heart just breaks for everyone who has suffered long Covid because they understand. You’re just not yourself anymore.’
Sutta added with a heavy sigh: ‘I’ve been in it for so many years. The first six months of this, I just thought I was going to die. But I am more optimistic that I am going to persevere through this, and I am going to conquer this. And that’s my message to other vaccine-injured injured going through what I’m going through: don’t give up.’
