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Shortly after the introduction of coronavirus vaccines about a year ago, women began reporting irregular menstrual cycles after receiving the vaccines.

Some said their period was late. Others reported bleeding heavier than normal or painful bleeding. In fact, some postmenopausal women who have not had their period for years have even said that they are menstruating again.

A study published Thursday found women’s menstrual cycles it really changes after vaccination against coronavirus. The authors reported that vaccinated women had slightly longer menstrual cycles after receiving the vaccine than those who were not vaccinated.

However, menstrual periods that came after almost a day on average did not lengthen, and the effect was transient with cycle lengths returning to normal within a month or two. For example, a person with a 28-day menstrual cycle that starts with seven days of bleeding still starts with a seven-day menstrual cycle, but the cycle lasts 29 days. The cycle ends when the next period starts and returns to 28 days in a month or two.

The delay was more pronounced in women who received both doses of the vaccine during the same menstrual cycle. The researchers saw these women’s periods two days later than usual.

Head of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at Yale, Dr. Hugh Taylor said the study, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, is one of the first to support anecdotal reports of disruption of menstrual cycles from women after vaccination. Medical School.

Hearing about irregular cycles from his own patients, Dr. “This confirms that there is something real here,” Taylor said.

At the same time, he added, the changes seen in the study were not significant and seemed temporary.

Dr. “I want to make sure we deter people from these untrue myths about fertility effects,” Taylor said. “One or two cycles of throwing periods may be annoying, but it won’t be medically harmful.”

He gave a different message to women who experienced vaginal bleeding or spotting in the postmenopausal period, whether or not they were post-vaccinated, and warned that there may be serious health problems and that they should be evaluated by a physician.

A serious disadvantage of the study, which focused on US residents, is that the sample is not nationally representative and cannot be generalized to the entire population.

The data was provided by a company called Natural Cycles, which made an app to monitor fertility. Its users are more likely to be white and college educated than the US population in general; they’re also thinner than the average American woman — weight can affect menstruation — and don’t use hormonal contraception.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Dr. Diana Bianchi said the findings should be reassuring for women of childbearing age. (The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Women’s Health Research and NICHD helped fund the study, as well as related research projects at Boston University, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, and Michigan State University.)

Dr. “Providers may say, ‘If you have an extra day, that’s normal, it’s nothing to worry about,'” Bianchi said.

The study was conducted by researchers at Oregon Health and Science University and the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University in collaboration with researchers from Natural Cycles, whose practice is used by millions of women worldwide.

De-identified data from users who agreed to have their information included in the study provided a wealth of evidence on how women’s cycles have changed during the pandemic.

Researchers looked at records from nearly 4,000 women who meticulously tracked their periods in real time, including about 2,400 vaccinated against the coronavirus and about 1,550 unvaccinated. All were U.S. residents aged 18 to 45 who had been recording their periods for at least six months.

For those who were vaccinated, the researchers looked at three cycles before and after vaccination to look for changes and compared them to a similar six-month period in women who did not receive the vaccine.

Overall, vaccination was associated, on average, with less than one full day change in cycle length after both vaccine doses compared to pre-vaccine cycles. The unvaccinated group saw no significant changes over six months.

Future studies using the database will examine other aspects of menstruation, such as whether periods are heavier or more painful after vaccination.

The new study’s findings may not apply equally to all women. A professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University, Dr. In fact, much of the change in cycle length was triggered by a small group of 380 vaccinated women who experienced at least a two-day change in their cycles, Alison Edelman said. and the paper’s lead author.

Dr. Edelman said some women who were vaccinated had cycles that were eight days longer than usual, which is considered clinically significant.

“While the cycle length differs by less than a day at the population level, for an individual, it can be a big issue, depending on their perspective and what they rely on menstruating for,” he said. “You may be expecting a pregnancy, you may be worried about pregnancy, you may be wearing white pants.”

It’s not clear why the menstrual cycle might be affected by the vaccine, but most women with regular periods experience an unusual cycle or missed period from time to time. Hormones secreted by the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and ovaries regulate the monthly cycle and can be affected by environmental factors, stress factors, and life changes.

(The changes observed in the study were not due to pandemic-related conditions, the authors said, as women in the unvaccinated group also lived through the pandemic.)

It is unknown whether other vaccines affect menstruation – clinical trials of vaccines and therapeutics generally do not track menstrual data points unless researchers are testing the therapeutic as a contraceptive or fertility enhancer or want to rule out pregnancy.

Dr. “We hope this experience will encourage vaccine manufacturers and clinical trials of therapeutics to ask questions about the menstrual cycle, just as you include other vital signs,” said Bianchi.

Dr. Information is important, just like knowing that you may have a headache or a fever after vaccination, Edelman said.

Dr. Edelman, “menstruating individuals have to deal with one week of each month, sometimes more,” he said. “If you add up over 40 years, it’s practically ten years of menses.”