There’s nothing like a late period to add a little more stress to your life. The most obvious culprit is pregnancy, but this is only one possibility, as there are many other reasons.
One of them could be the coronavirus vaccine. That’s right, although it was just a speculation that began to gain strength among women, it has just been confirmed after a scientific study. So if you got vaccinated and were concerned about the strange change in your period, this could be the answer.
Since the covid-19 vaccine was created, recommendations on vaccination for all women, including those who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant in the future, have been made. For this reason, concerns about the possible effects of the vaccine on menstruation have made some hesitate to do so.
The speculation began when some women began to report both on social networks and through official channels about the menstrual changes they were experiencing after receiving the vaccine. But these reports represented only a small portion of vaccinated women and varied in the side effects they reported.
That is why science decided to come to the rescue and a team of researchers led by Dr. Alison Edelman, from the Oregon Health and Science University, decided to investigate whether vaccines against covid-19 really cause changes in menstrual cycles.
The team analyzed data on nearly 4,000 women, ages 18 to 45, that were collected through a fertility tracking app. All women had cycles of normal length, 24 to 38 days, and information from three menstrual cycles before the first vaccine dose was compared with three cycles after. Fifty-five percent of vaccinated participants received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 35 percent the Moderna vaccine and 7 percent the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The results were released in Obstetrics & Gynecology and showed that women who received a covid-19 vaccine had an average increase in cycle length of almost a day for each dose.
Receiving two doses of the vaccine within the same menstrual cycle further increased its duration, about two days on average. Women’s period length often fluctuates, and experts consider period variation of up to eight days to be normal.
But don’t worry, longer menstrual cycles after vaccination decreased, suggesting it’s probably temporary. What a relief!