According to two new studies, COVID-19 vaccines do not increase the risk of miscarriage in pregnant women.
In one study, a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examined data from the agency’s V-SAFE smartphone tool, which tracks people who received shots from Covid.
In the other study, a separate team examined different data from the CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink.
Both groups of researchers came to the same conclusion: women who suffered miscarriages were no more likely to receive a vaccine against COVID-19 than women who were still pregnant.
Doctors hope the findings can convince pregnant women, who are at higher risk for serious illness and death from COVID-19, to get vaccinated.
Two new studies found that women who suffered miscarriages were no more likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine than women who were still pregnant. Pictured: Pregnant woman waiting in a pantry line at St. Mary’s Church in Waltham, Massachusetts, May 2020
Pregnant women have a higher risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19 compared to the general population, but only 24.8% (light blue line) have received at least one dose of vaccine
As of Wednesday, only 24.8% of pregnant women have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to CDC data.
This is despite several studies that have found that expectant mothers are more vulnerable to severe cases of COVID-19 or death than the general population.
A study last month at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, found that women who took part while infected with COVID-19 were 5.7 times more likely to end up in intensive care units with a 5, 2 percent compared to 0.9 percent of women without Covid
In addition, about 0.1 percent of mothers with the virus died compared to 0.01 percent of those who were not infected, a difference of ten times.
For the first new study, published on the Research Square prepress server, a CDC team analyzed V-SAFE data.
The tool uses text messages and web surveys so that people who have been vaccinated can report any symptoms or side effects they are suffering from.
The researchers examined 2,456 pregnant women who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or the Covid Modern vaccine before 20 weeks of gestation starting July 19, 2021.
They then examined the risk of miscarriage, also described in the study as a “miscarriage”.
Miscarriages occur between 11 and 16 percent of pregnancies and the study found that the rate of miscarriage in women who received the COVID-19 vaccine is 12.8 percent, within the normal rank.
When broken down by age, the abortions involved range from 9.8 percent among young people aged 20 to 29 to 28.8 percent among those over 40.
This also coincides with data, which show that women are at higher risk for miscarriage when they conceive at age 35 or older.
“These findings add to the accumulation of evidence indicating that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines during pregnancy are safe,” the CDC team wrote.
In the second new study, published in JAMA, a team from HealthPartners, a health care provider based in Bloomington, Minnesota, examined data from the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink.
The Vaccine Safety Datalink is a collaborative project between the CDC Office of Immunization Safety and nine health organizations studying the adverse effects of vaccines.
The researchers analyzed data from 105,000 patients who became pregnant in early December 15, 2020 to June 28, 2021.
Among women, 14.3% received at least one dose of the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
They examined women between six weeks and 19 weeks of gestation and identified the “index date” as the last day of the four-week monitoring period.
The team found that women had received a COVID-19 vaccine 28 days before the index date in eight percent of ongoing pregnancies and 8.6 percent of miscarriages.
This means that women who had miscarriages were not more likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the previous 28 days compared to women who did not have miscarriages.
“Our data adds to a growing research group that should give pregnant women confidence to get vaccinated against COVID-19, if they haven’t already,” she told The Star Tribune, lead author, Dr. Elyse Kharbanda, senior researcher at the HealthPartners Institute.
“It is especially important for pregnant women to protect themselves from the virus because COVID-19 infections can affect them more severely and cause complications in childbirth.”
The findings come about a month after the CDC urged pregnant women to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as they could.
Earlier, the agency said pregnant women were eligible for the vaccine, but did not fully recommend that they receive it due to uncertainties about possible long-term effects.
