Doctors bust COVID vaccine fertility myths
A panel of OU Health doctors broke down myths and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine, pregnancy and fertility — stressing that it’s safe and effective for pregnant women and anyone concerned about fertility to get the shots.
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an urgent plea for people to get vaccinated before or during pregnancy.
Across the U.S. there have been more than 125,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in pregnant people, more than 22,000 hospitalizations and 161 deaths throughout the course of the pandemic, according to the CDC. Twenty-two of those deaths were just in August.
Oklahoma health officials said Thursday they haven’t been actively tracking COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations during pregnancy, and the data they have would be limited.
“There are more complications for pregnant women who do get COVID, when compared to non-pregnant women or pregnant women who do not get COVID,” said Dr. Stefanie Bryant, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist with OU Health, said at the panel Wednesday.
Why are pregnant people more at risk for COVID-19?
When someone is pregnant, they’re in a state of “relative immunosuppression,” Bryant said. Other changes in the body also play a role — like how the diaphragm, the muscle that helps us breathe, is pushed up as the uterus grows, she said.
“So our lung volumes actually go down a little bit, and pregnant women will naturally note a little bit of shortness of breath, which is very normal in pregnancy, and higher respiration rate,” Bryant said.
That means pregnant women have less “reserves” — their bodies can’t compensate as long for any difficulty breathing. COVID-19 can attack the lungs, making breathing difficult.
The heart can also be under more strain when pregnant, Bryant said.
“Those are just a few of the reasons that it puts you at increased risk,” she said.
Do COVID-19 vaccines affect pregnancy?
When the COVID-19 vaccines first became available, there was little data available about how they would work for pregnant women.
“But as it’s been nine months now since the vaccines have been out, we’ve gathered more and more data,” said Dr. Kathryn Kramer, an OB-GYN with OU Health.
Kramer pointed to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at about 4,000 pregnant women who had registered with the V-safe pregnancy registry through the CDC. The study looked at whether the vaccine was associated with increased risk for pregnancy loss, and researchers found a rate of about 12.6%.
“At first, when you hear that, that sounds high,” Kramer said. “However, at baseline, a woman’s risk of pregnancy loss is anywhere ... between 10 and 26%, so it’s right there when compared with baseline.”
Risk of pre-term births and congenital anomalies were either within or below baseline levels in the women who participated, Kramer said.
Do COVID-19 vaccines affect fertility for men or women?
Misinformation abounds about what the COVID-19 vaccine could mean for fertility. A blog post months ago shared a claim that the vaccine leads to female sterility, “which is in fact entirely baseless,” said Dr. Blake Evans, who specializes in reproductive endocrinology and infertility.
The theory, saying the vaccine attacks the placenta and renders a woman sterile, exploded on the internet, but it is “completely baseless, completely not true,” Evans said.
“Believe me when I say, I would never tell you to do anything that would compromise your chances of successful pregnancy and accomplishing your goals of starting a family,” he said.
Since the vaccines have been studied, there are now multiple studies that show the COVID-19 vaccines don’t impact fertility.
“The evidence is starting to mount, and it’s becoming more and more clear that there’s no effect on fertility, both male and female,” Evans said. “But one thing’s for certain: We know the very real risk of COVID when you are pregnant.”
What about any long-term effects of the vaccines?
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. They work by giving the body a code to help the body recognize the “spike protein” in the structure of the COVID-19 virus and make antibodies against it.
The vaccine itself is destroyed within a few days after injection, but the antibodies remain to help fight off future infection, the doctors explain.
“When we look at long-term risks of the vaccine, we don’t see any, because of how these vaccines work,” Kramer said. “At this point, the only long-term effect of a vaccine that we know is survival — you are highly unlikely to have complications from COVID or die.”