COVID-19 vaccination does not affect women’s fertility treatment parameters
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ANAHEIM, Calif. — COVID-19 vaccination status had no impact on certain aspects of pregnancies facilitated through assisted reproductive technology, according to study data.
“This study was based when the delta variant appeared, so everybody was hesitant about getting the [COVID-19] vaccine,” Braian Ledesma, an andrology research fellow at the Desai Sethi Urology Institute at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, told Healio. “IVF cycles are expensive — they can go up to about $50,000 — so we wouldn’t want to take any type of risk with doing something that may negatively affect the outcomes.”
Given these reservations about the vaccine, particularly among pregnant people, the researchers “wanted to determine whether there was actually an impact on certain parameters that are significant for assisted reproductive technology (ART),” Yaima C. Valdes, MD, of the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in Plantation, Florida, told Healio.
Ledesma, Valdes and colleagues retrospectively analyzed the characteristics of 106 female fertility care patients, 58 of whom were vaccinated against COVID-19 and 48 of whom were not. The researchers compared the following characteristics by vaccination status:
- BMI;
- donor age;
- levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone, anti-Mullerian hormone, luteinizing hormone post-trigger, serum progesterone pre-trigger;
- number of eggs retrieved;
- number of mature eggs;
- number of fertilized eggs; and
- estradiol levels before human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) injection.
Analyses revealed no significant associations between any of the analyzed parameters and vaccination status.
“[This] lets people know that it’s safe to be vaccinated, especially since there are a lot of pregnancy complications with not being vaccinated [and having COVID-19],” Valdes said. “So, if people are paying this amount of money to go through these ART treatments, they want to make sure they are able to get vaccinated before or during ART.”
Valdes said the study included patients who received at least one dose of the vaccine, so some may not have had both doses of the vaccine or received a booster dose.