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When my period was at the end of last month, I was cautiously optimistic. After a miscarriage in December, quickly followed by a Covid-19 crisis for my husband, my period had remained stubbornly regular, as it almost always is. This time however, day 27 passed without any blood appearing in my pants. I played the game most women trying to get pregnant play: I negotiated with myself when I would take the pregnancy test.
But after a week, I couldn’t take it anymore. I took the test. “Not pregnant.” A week later I did another test. Still “not pregnant”. It wasn’t until I finally told my friends about it that I remembered: I had received my second dose of the vaccine the previous month. Would there be a link?
The possibility seems more and more likely. This week, a BMJ study found that nearly 35,000 British women reported that following their Covid vaccination, they experienced more painful and / or irregular periods. A month later, they were back to normal.
Dr Victoria Male, senior lecturer in reproductive immunology at Imperial College London, who led the work, said all major vaccines – Pfizer, Moderna, AZ Oxford – were involved, but nothing was suggested long-term impact on fertility. .
Theorizing that the body’s immune response to the vaccine could trigger a change in the menstrual cycle, Dr Male stressed that more research is needed.
This study isn’t the first we’ve heard of jab breakouts. Since the vaccine rollout began, women have been scouring social media, talking about how the vaccine seemed to impact their menstrual cycle.
For most of these women, their vaccine injection was followed by a late or particularly heavy period. Other women have had breakthrough bleeding (when you bleed outside of your period), some women whose birth control meant they hadn’t had a period for years suddenly had to rush out to buy tampons. All of these women have taken to social media for advice or for reassurance. But until this study, there were few offers, highlighting how much no one thought to consider the possibility of a connection.
But what the new study highlights is how much no one has thought about considering the possibility of a connection until now.
As with most clinical studies, trials of the Covid-19 vaccine have not investigated the effects of the menstrual cycle – in fact, in many trials, women are completely excluded. because of the potential effects of the menstrual cycle, so perhaps we should be grateful for the little mercies that women have been included.
When women started reporting menstrual cycle irregularities after the vaccine, the lack of data on this issue led doctors to dismiss their concerns.
“It’s just a coincidence,” we were told, “women often have an irregular cycle from time to time.” This attitude ignored not only the fact that there has never been serious research into how often women who have regular periods sometimes have irregular periods, but also that many of us have been tracking our cycles ever since. years – and know that 20 days is not a “normal” irregularity. Okay then, proposed the medical community, moving to the stage of negotiating denial, it’s stress. Which can be, although I can’t say that I found my vaccine more stressful than going through a global pandemic for a year and a half.
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