As more women get the COVID vaccines, reports of abnormal or irregular periods and bleeding, as well as late periods and other changes are increasing.
Reports of “vaccine shedding,” where nonvaccinated people say they’ve experienced adverse health events after being around a recently vaccinated person, are also occurring. But, experts say that neither condition — abnormal menstrual cycles or feelings of ill health by being exposed to a vaccinated person — have been scientifically connected to the vaccines.
For one thing, the vaccines don’t give you COVID and the spike protein in it doesn’t shed, experts say. And, while it’s possible it could show up in low levels in the blood, “it should not be shed in significant quantity in respiratory or other secretions,” said Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at Nebraska Medicine.
And, “there’s no biological mechanism, based on how the vaccines work, that would explain these [menstrual] occurrences,” said Jennifer Griffin Miller, an OB-GYN at Olson Center for Women’s Health at Durham Outpatient Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
As far as shedding goes, it can’t happen unless the vaccine is live, and Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines are not live, the experts add. However, “the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines are considered live vaccines because they both contain adenovirus” according to a press release from Nebraska Medicine. “(Again, they do NOT contain the coronavirus.) But the adenovirus in both the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines can’t replicate, so there’s no way they can shed.”
SOURCE: Nebraska Medicine April 24, 2021