Pregnancy, Fertility and Vaccines

This is a subject that can get very heated at times, but what is the evidence-based information regarding pregnancy and vaccines that’s available? Are they safe? Well, this article goes into great detail to help with this issue and hopefully set the records straight.

➡ mRNA vaccine understanding
These vaccines cannot enter the nucleus of a cell, alter DNA or anything else to you or your baby because the mRNA vaccine would do their work on the outside of the nucleus (in a space called the cytoplasm), and thus cannot interact with the nucleus, this has been observed as well. After instructions have finished the cells break this down completely. (Source: https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/where-mrna-vaccines-and-spike-proteins-go)

mRNA travels from the nucleus to the cytoplasm for translation. Because mRNA is constantly being degraded in the cytoplasm, it is synthesized at a much higher rate than necessary for the maintenance of a steady amount. This link shows us the half-life of mRNA. (Source: http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/bioed/webmodules/mRNA.htm)

The mRNA protein compound generally has a human half-life of 10hrs around human cells, and are very quickly degraded by the body, RNA is already very fragile as it is, those handling mRNA or RNA on a weekly basis could tell you this as well. (Source: https://sciencing.com/degradation-mrna-6196816.html)

Unlike FluMist (alternative to flu vaccine), Polio vaccines and other live attenuated vaccines, none of the Covid-19 related vaccines use any live virus, so all very harmless to you and your little one. We have to remember that live virus vaccines would not be given to any female during pregnancy whatsoever

➡ Half-Life
Half-life is the time it takes for half of the unstable nuclei in a sample to decay or for the activity of the sample to halve or for the count rate to halve. (Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3tb8mn/revision/3)

➡ American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) — advice
A quote from their recommendations for pregnant and lactating women: “vaccines should not be withheld from pregnant or lactating individuals who otherwise meet criteria for vaccination.” (Source: https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/practice-advisory/articles/2020/12/vaccinating-pregnant-and-lactating-patients-against-covid-19)

➡ Antibodies in breast milk
All milk that was recovered from donors of this study posted to ScienceDirect contained quite a significant amount of antibodies (Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004220309329)

A study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG), looked at 131 women of reproductive age (84 pregnant, 31 lactating and 16 non-pregnant) the cohort study demonstrated the vaccines confer protective immunity to newborns through breast milk and the placenta. Vaccine-generated antibodies were also present in all umbilical cord blood and breast milk samples were taken from the study. (Source: https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(21)00187-3/fulltext)

➡ Covid-19 risk in pregnant women
This study from the Lancet outline the dangerous and devastating effects Covid-19 has on pregnant women. (Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31679-2/fulltext)

A study from the JAMA science journal looks at outcomes of women with Covid-19 giving birth and found that women with COVID-19 who were giving birth had a statistically significantly higher mortality rate of 0.13% compared with women without COVID-19. (Source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2782978)

A brief report from AOGS highlights the dangers of Covid-19 aspects who has SARS-CoV-2 who were in Swedish Intensive Care Units: (Source: https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aogs.13901)

A recent study has also found that pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of birth were more likely to develop pre-eclampsia, more likely to need an emergency caesarean and their risk of stillbirth was twice as high, although the actual number of stillbirths remains low. (Source: https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(21)00565-2/fulltext)

In a peer-reviewed research article from Plos One science journal the UK Obstetric Surveillance Study (UKOSS) report from January 2021 describes 1,148 pregnant women with COVID-19 who were admitted to hospital between March and September 2020. Nearly one in five women with symptomatic COVID-19 gave birth prematurely. However, women who tested positive for COVID-19 but had no symptoms were not more likely to give birth prematurely. (Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251123)

As we can see from above, the risk to pregnant women for Covid-19 is very high, and certainly would be an important topic of conversation to your midwife about any questions or fears that arise for you.

➡ Debunking pregnancy and fertility claims
I’ll start off by highlighting one very important quite on fertility “In short, the claim that the vaccines for COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 will cause infertility because of some kind of cross-reactive immune response between the spike protein antigens and syncytin proteins is baseless. You should get these vaccines without fear of what they may do for your fertility.” (Source: https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/are-covid-19-vaccines-going-to-cause-infertility)

There is simply no published evidence that there is some immune cross-reactivity between the S-protein and syncytin-1. Not only is there no evidence, but it’s also not plausible that one small 3-peptide part of those two proteins would induce some sort of cross-reactivity.

Links to other articles and sources about the false fertility claims:

BMJ journal article stating no evidence Covid-19 vaccine affect fertility: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n509

“There’s no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine has any effect on your chances of becoming pregnant. There’s no need to avoid pregnancy after vaccination. The vaccine cannot give you or your baby COVID-19.” — https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/coronavirus-vaccine/

Healthline reliable article detailing how vaccines do not cause infertility: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/no-the-covid-19-vaccines-do-not-cause-infertility

This link explains why infertility is falsely linked with the vaccines: https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210112/why-covid-vaccines-are-falsely-linked-to-infertility

Debunking claims of female fertility:
Research has demonstrated no adverse effects in their DART studies. Additionally, this is the most recent study which supports previous DART and retrospective studies of women and reproduction. (Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8163337/)

Examined women’s IVF treatment parameters and pregnancies before and after their vaccination between vaccination — no effects found. (pre-print) (Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.30.21258079v1.full-text)

The study checked both COVID disease and BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine induce anti-COVID IgG in follicular fluid; neither recent infection nor vaccination appears to negatively affect follicular function (pre-print) (Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.09.21255195v1.full-text)

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE (ASRM) statement regarding vaccination when trying to conceive (aligns with ACOG and SMRU) (Source: https://www.asrm.org/globalassets/asrm/asrm-content/news-and-publications/covid-19/covidtaskforceupdate11.pdf)

➡ Reports of miscarriage from vaccination
There is a dubious report going around using UK Yellow Card Data which is similar to VAERS and has the same flaws that, showed six reported miscarriages (recorded as spontaneous abortions) which increased to over 170 for Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines as of Yellow Card data up to 9 June. (covering 9 December 2020 to 24 January 2021). Much like VAERS, the Yellow Card data cannot say the vaccine has caused anything as these self-reporting systems cannot infer causality. (Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n363)

Safety monitoring in VAERS: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26209838/

Some anti-vaxxers also tried to spin a perfectly good study on preliminary data following vaccinations of pregnant women, the study actually showed the vaccines to be in favour of pregnant women. The data can be seen here. (Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2104983?articleTools=true#page=1)

Conclusion to one study for miscarriages via a quote: “Miscarriages are common among parous women; 43% of parous women report having experienced one or more first-trimester spontaneous miscarriages, rising to 81% among women with 11 or more living children. One in every 17 parous women has three or more miscarriages. Depending on her health, nutrition and lifestyle choices, even a 39-year-old parous woman with a history of 3 or more miscarriages has a good chance of carrying a future pregnancy to term but she should act expediently.” (Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741961/#:~:text=The%20spontaneous%20miscarriage%20rate%20varies,period%20%5B1%2C%202%5D)

💥 Why do miscarriages happen?
The reasons are genuinely unknown as this area of expertise via research is underfunded.

💥 Stats on miscarriages
Most happen within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which is also known as an early pregnancy
Many of these miscarriages are caused by chromosomal abnormalities (problems in development) in the baby but it is thought that around half have underlying causes
Estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage
Around 11 in 1,000 pregnancies are ectopic (is a pregnancy that implants outside the uterine cavity)
About 1 in 100 women in the UK experience recurrent miscarriages (3 or more in a row)
More than 6 in 10 of women who have a recurrent miscarriage go on to have a successful pregnancy
Around 1–2 in 100 women have a miscarriage in the second trimester. (Source: https://www.tommys.org/baby-loss-support/miscarriage-information-and-support/miscarriage-statistics#general)

The above information is based on UK stats, miscarriages haven’t gone up since vaccinations have started at all and stayed roughly about the same. (Source: Office of National Statistics)

As a researcher, epidemiologist and parent myself, I always look for highly reliable evidence to support rebuttals over claims as important as this subject, however as vaccination is very safe as evidenced by studies on this article, always speak to your local obstetrician or mid-wife for information, advice and other questions.

💥 Thanks for reading, Lawrence. Please consider a small contribution, in the form of a beer as all articles are created in my small amount of spare time: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LawrenceRob