Can you take Tylenol, Ibuprofen after receiving the COVID vaccine?

As COVID-19 vaccinations roll out across the country, you may be wondering if it’s okay to take pain relievers before or after receiving an injection.

After all, these vaccines can produce side effects that cause pain and discomfort, although they tend to be minor and should go away within a few days.

The most common problems that people will experience are pain and swelling at the injection site, while recipients may also experience fever, fatigue, chills, or a headache.

For most people, health experts recommend against premedication with over-the-counter pain relievers such as aspirin, acetaminophen (eg, Tylenol), and ibuprofen (eg, Motrin, Advil) before taking it. get a vaccine.

This is because there is a chance that these drugs can dull your immune response to the vaccine, reducing the body’s ability to build defenses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.

However, people who regularly take any of these medications for another medical condition should continue to take them as needed. Stopping the medications in these cases could cause unintentional problems.

After receiving a vaccination, anyone who has symptoms that make them uncomfortable can take these drugs, provided the correct doses are adhered to, experts say.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends talking to your doctor to see if you should take these medications if you experience pain or discomfort after receiving an injection.

The side effects caused by these vaccines are the result of the activation of the body’s immune response – which is the intended purpose of the shot. Essentially, vaccines teach the body how to identify and neutralize the virus when exposed.

But there is no research on how drugs like acetaminophen and ibuprofen can specifically interfere with how COVID-19 vaccines work, hence expert recommendations not to premedicate.

“We do not recommend premedication with ibuprofen or Tylenol prior to COVID-19 vaccines due to the lack of data on its impact on vaccine-induced antibody responses,” Dr. Simone Wildes, infectious disease specialist at South Shore Medical Center and a member of the COVID-19 vaccine advisory group in Massachusetts, told ABC News.

Antibodies are proteins produced by the immune system that fight off pathogens. COVID-19 vaccines cause the body to generate antibodies that specifically target the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

There is evidence from previous research on vaccines for other diseases that premedication with pain relievers before an injection can dampen the body’s immune response.

“There is data in the vaccine literature, which predates COVID-19 and almost all [done] in children, this premedication with [fever-reducing drugs] like acetaminophen or ibuprofen decrease the antibody response to the first dose of vaccine, ”Dr. David J. Cennimo, infectious disease specialist and assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told Healthline.

Despite such findings, it is not known what the real impacts of premedication with pain relievers before taking a vaccine are on how the vaccine works.