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COVID vaccination for couples safe for pregnancy

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Newswise — Multiple studies have shown that the COVID-19 vaccines do not lead to infertility or pregnancy complications such as miscarriage, but many people are still wary of adverse effects from the vaccine on pregnancy.

A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers now provides deeper insight into the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for people planning to become pregnant.

Published in the journal Human Reproduction, the study found no increased risk of early or late miscarriage as a result of male or female partners getting a COVID-19 vaccine prior to conceiving.

The study is the first to evaluate the risk of early miscarriage (less than eight weeks’ gestation) following preconception COVID-19 vaccination, as well as the first to evaluate male vaccination and miscarriage.

The researchers hope these results provide useful information for individuals planning to become pregnant, as well as their healthcare providers.

“These findings should be replicated in other populations, but are reassuring for couples who are planning pregnancy,” says lead author Jennifer Yland, an epidemiology PhD student at BUSPH at the time of the study.

For the study, Yland and colleagues analyzed survey data on COVID-19 vaccination and miscarriage among female and male participants in the BUSPH-based Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO), an ongoing National Institutes of Health-funded study that enrolls women trying to conceive, and follows them from preconception through six months after delivery. Participants in this new analysis included 1,815 female individuals in the US and Canada who were followed in the study from December 2020 through November 2022. They were observed from their first positive pregnancy test until a miscarriage or other event (such as induced abortion, ectopic pregnancy, or 20 weeks’ gestation)—whichever occurred first.

Among the female participants, 75 percent had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by the time they became pregnant. Almost a quarter of the pregnancies resulted in miscarriage, and 75 percent of these miscarriages occurred prior to 8 weeks’ gestation, but there was no increased risk.

Risk of miscarriage was 26.6 percent among unvaccinated female participants, 23.9 percent among female participants who had received one dose of the vaccine before conception, 24.5 percent among those who completed a full primary series before conception, 22.1 percent among those who completed the vaccine series three months before conception, and 20.1 percent among those who received only one dose of a two-dose vaccine before conception.

“The rate of miscarriage among vaccinated individuals was not only comparable with that of PRESTO participants who conceived before the pandemic, but our data indicated a slightly lower risk of miscarriage among vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated individuals,” Yland says.

Federal health officials continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccination to individuals planning to conceive, and stress that the benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine outweigh potential risks of vaccination during preconception or pregnancy.

The study’s senior author is Lauren Wise, professor of epidemiology at BUSPH.

 

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Whooping cough is at a decade-high level in US

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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.

The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.

Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.

Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.

“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.

But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.

That includes his own teenage daughter.

“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.

It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.

“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”

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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Scientists show how sperm and egg come together like a key in a lock

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How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.

New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.

“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.

The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.

Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.

It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.

Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.

Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.

The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.

The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Turn Your Wife Into Your Personal Sex Kitten

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