The fear of infertility is causing young women to avoid getting the COVID vaccine. The scientific truth denies the basis of that fear.
The COVID vaccine isn’t a threat if you’re considering becoming pregnant. In fact, studies show that it offers powerful protection. Misconceptions and false information is working against healthcare workers as they race to get the vaccine into the arms of the public.
One of the biggest rumors being spread is that the COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), causes infertility. This allegation is causing many women to hesitate about getting immunized.
The answer is no, according to Kristina M. Adams Waldorf, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and an expert in pregnancy infections at UW Medicine in Seattle. This falsehood, she says, “is a very clever way to try to dissuade people from becoming vaccinated — part of a coordinated anti-vax misinformation campaign.”
“We see a lot of anti-vax misinformation that looks like it’s coming from a reputable source,” Dr. Adams Waldorf adds, explaining that this particular claim is especially devious — and effective — because it combines COVID vaccination worries with deep-seated fears that many women have about their fertility and future ability to become pregnant.
Rumors that the COVID-19 vaccine causes infertility focus on the placenta, the organ that provides nutrients and oxygen to the fetus and removes waste. “What they are purporting is that the vaccine will generate antibodies against part of the coronavirus ‘spike’ protein … and that the same antibodies will cross-react with a protein that is made by the placenta called syncytin-1,” says Adams Waldorf. Experts in the field have examined this issue, and find that the vaccine would not act in this way. “There is no similarity between the coronavirus ‘spike’ protein and placental syncytin-1,” Adams Waldorf says.
To disprove this theory, scientists investigated whether blood serum from people who have had COVID-19 and made their own antibodies would bind to placental syncytin-1. The antibodies don’t, Adams Waldorf says.
What’s more, says Adams Waldorf, “We don’t have any reports of infertility in people who have already received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines; in fact, people in these clinical trials were asked not get pregnant and some got pregnant anyway.”
During the Pfizer vaccine trial, 23 women involved in the study became pregnant, and of those, the only one who lost the pregnancy was a participant from the placebo group.
The uncertainty and distrust about the COVID vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna may stem from the use of a sophisticated genetic technology. Most vaccines for illnesses, like the flu, contain the illness that the body must attack and create an immunity against. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines don’t contain a weakened or inactivated coronavirus, explains Tarun Jain, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
“It can be hard to understand how the COVID-19 vaccine works because it requires a deep understanding of cellular biology. In simple terms, all the vaccine is doing is giving some material — what’s called mRNA [messenger RNA] — that allows our own cells to produce some of the protein called the spike protein that’s found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus,” he says.
After making the spike protein, the cell breaks down the mRNA, says Dr. Jain. “It’s not going into the nucleus, which is where the DNA resides,” he says.
“All [the vaccine] is doing is getting our own body to make some of this spike protein, which will then allow our body to develop an immune response,” says Jain. “It’s not altering our genetics or DNA in any way.”
Recent findings suggest that COVID-19 poses a greater threat to pregnant women than previously suspected. A small study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology on January 27 found that pregnant women with COVID-19 had a 3.5 times higher rate of being hospitalized for their illness and were 13 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the general population of the same age.
“Our study really indicates that pregnant women are a high-risk group for COVID-19,” says Adams Waldorf, the senior authority on the paper. “We are concerned that COVID-19-associated maternal deaths have been massively undercounted; we should be very careful with this group and not downplay the risks of what COVID-19 can mean during pregnancy,” she says. “In my opinion, the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks in pregnancy.”
Before deciding to avoid taking the vaccine, reach out to your obstetrician with any questions or concerns.
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