Research Rebuts Claims Linking COVID-19 Vaccines to Male Infertility

SciCheck Digest

A new study found there was no negative effect on sperm levels in men after receiving the COVID-19 vaccines, undercutting suggestions that the shots affect male fertility. But social media posts have made the baseless claim that vaccinated men “are effectively sterile.”

How safe are the vaccines?

No serious safety concerns were found in the clinical trials of the vaccines that have been authorized for use in the United States. 

On April 13, the CDC and Food and Drug Administration recommended “a pause in the use” of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The agencies lifted the pause on April 23, shortly after the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 10-4 to resume the vaccine’s use with a warning about a rare, severe type of blood clot and low blood platelets that mostly occurred in women aged 18 to 49 years old. As of May 24, the agencies had identified 32 total cases among more than 10.2 million J&J vaccines administered. There have been three deaths linked to the blood clotting condition, as of May 7, according to the CDC.

Since the rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in December 2020, a small number of people in the U.S. have had serious allergic reactions following receipt of the shots. 

Some allergic reactions, including a potentially life-threatening reaction known as anaphylaxis, are to be expected with any vaccine. Fortunately, that kind of severe reaction is typically very rare, occurs within minutes of inoculation and can be treated. 

As of Jan. 18, there have been 2.5 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 4.7 cases per million of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those who develop anaphylaxis are usually given epinephrine, the drug found in EpiPens. None of these reactions has led to death. On Feb. 26, Johnson & Johnson said it had received a report of one anaphylactic reaction in South Africa.

To make sure serious allergic reactions can be identified and treated, all people receiving a vaccine should be observed for 15 minutes after getting a shot, and anyone who has experienced anaphylaxis or had any kind of immediate allergic reaction to any vaccine or injection in the past should be monitored for a half hour. People who have had a serious allergic reaction to a previous dose or one of the vaccine ingredients should not be immunized. Also, those who shouldn’t receive one type of COVID-19 vaccine should be monitored for 30 minutes after receiving a different type of vaccine.

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What side effects should you expect if you get a COVID-19 vaccine?

Many people experience pain at the site of injection, fatigue, muscle pain or headache. Data from the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna trials also show the side effects included joint pain, chills or fever. These reactions are more likely after the second dose of those vaccines, given several weeks after the first, and are more common and severe in younger people. The Johnson & Johnson side effects, too, were more common in 18- to 59-year-old participants.

Since the rollout of the vaccines, a small number of people in the U.S. have had serious allergic reactions following receipt of the shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised that anyone who has previously experienced anaphylaxis or had any kind of immediate allergic reaction to any vaccine or injection be monitored for a half hour after getting the shot.

In addition, in late April, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration added warnings to fact sheets for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine about a suggested increased risk of rare blood clots combined with low levels of blood platelets. As of May 24, the agencies had identified 32 total cases among more than 10.2 million J&J vaccines administered. There have been three deaths linked to the blood clotting condition, as of May 7, according to the CDC.

The CDC says of the J&J vaccine that “women younger than 50 years old especially should be aware of the rare risk of blood clots with low platelets after vaccination, and that other COVID-19 vaccines are available where this risk has not been seen.”

The FDA also recommends against a second dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines for those who had a serious allergic reaction to the first dose of that particular vaccine. It recommends a person to avoid any vaccine that contains an ingredient that has previously triggered a serious allergic reaction in that person.

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Full Story

Early in the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., we addressed questions and claims about the impact of vaccination on fertility. Some claims used a bogus argument to conclude that the mRNA vaccines — from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — would cause “female sterilization.” In reality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that there is no evidence any vaccine, including those for COVID-19, cause fertility problems.

More recently, some posts swirling on social media have spread an unfounded narrative that the vaccines will create widespread infertility problems for men.

A May 23 story published on a website called the Daily Expose, based in the U.K., and shared on Facebook more than 1,100 times, claims that the “VACCINES could cause ‘mass male infertility.’”

The story cites an interview with Roger Hodkinson — a Canadian pathologist who in 2020 reportedly called COVID-19 “the biggest hoax,” erroneously likening the disease to the flu. It claims that “the spike protein expresses in the placenta and the testes,” which “could kill unborn babies in current pregnancies and permanently stop men having children.” The Daily Expose story also takes aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci, suggesting the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is a “dead man walking.”

The claims have been republished on other websites and spread elsewhere, including on Twitter and Instagram — where one popular post declared that “all males who have been vaccinated are effectively sterile.”

But experts say there is no evidence that the vaccines cause infertility in men. And there are new data that further undercut the online claims.

In a study published June 17 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the University of Miami reported that they found “no significant decreases in any sperm parameter” among a group of healthy men before and after receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine. The team collected semen samples of 45 men, 18 and older, before receiving either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine — and again more than 70 days after receiving their second dose.

“This is the full life cycle of sperm and 70 days is sufficient time to see if the vaccine impacts semen parameters,” Daniel C. Gonzalez, a medical student at the university and one of the study’s authors, said in a statement. “We measured semen volume, sperm concentration, and the total amount of moving sperm and found there were no declines in any of the parameters as compared to the baseline analysis.”

Researchers at a hospital in Israel have reported similar findings in a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed. That study evaluated the sperm production in 43 men before and after receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. “Our results demonstrate that the vaccine does not impair sperm parameters,” the authors wrote.

Photo by Yulia Reznikov via Getty Images

Dr. Puneet Masson, director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at Penn Medicine, also told us in a phone interview that his observations in the field rebut the notion that vaccines are detrimental to male fertility.

“I’ve had patients who had fertility testing pre-vaccine and post-vaccine, just by virtue of my practice, and I have not had any patients I can think of who have had any adverse reactions from the vaccines in terms of fertility,” he said.

The Society for Male Reproduction and Urology and the Society for the Study of Male Reproduction issued a joint statement in January saying that “COVID-19 vaccines should be offered to men desiring fertility, similar to men not desiring fertility, when they meet criteria for vaccination.”

The statement notes that some men could experience a fever following vaccination, which “can cause temporary declines in sperm production.”

“Thus, if a man experiences fever as the result of the COVID-19 vaccine, he may experience a temporary decline in sperm production, but that would be similar to or less than if the individual experienced fever from developing COVID-19 or for other reasons,” the statement said.

Masson said that “someone getting a mild fever from a vaccine is still better” than getting COVID-19, especially since a fever from the disease may last longer.

Experts say a fever could affect a man’s fertility for upward of three months. But again, that’s any fever — not something unique to a fever following vaccination.

Hodkinson — the Canadian pathologist cited in the Daily Expose story alleging the potential for “mass male infertility” — made similar suggestions in a May video interview. He claimed that the ACE2 receptor “is present in the testes” and “it’s actually on the cells that produce spermatozoa.” On the screen of the video, the headline of a paper reads: “ACE2 receptor expression in testes: implications in coronavirus disease 2019 pathogenesis.”

That paper was published in 2020 in the journal Biology of Reproduction. The study dealt with the COVID-19 disease, not the vaccines.

Two of the study’s authors told us in an email that there was “[a]bsolutely not” anything in their paper that suggests the vaccines could cause issues with the testes or male fertility.

The paper “is a hypothetical article about the potential effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection on male reproductive health, not about the impact of COVID-19 vaccine on male reproductive health,” said Saguna Verma, an associate professor and immunologist at the University of Hawaii, and Dr. Hooman Sadri, an assistant professor and reproductive biologist at Wake Forest University.

“We hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 could infect testes cells and lead to testosterone reduction or germ cell depletion for short-term period. This hypothesis was based on the clinical reports of reduced testosterone levels in COVID-19 patients,” they said. They noted that “these effects were transient in patients,” so their paper did not prove that infection with the virus leads to male infertility, either.

On that point, the University of Miami research team that studied male fertility and the COVID-19 vaccines has previously reported evidence that three men who died from COVID-19 had impaired sperm function — and that the virus was present in the testes of one man — prompting questions about whether the virus itself could potentially affect male fertility. The study’s lead author, Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, suggested further studies on the issue are in order.

Editor’s note: SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over our editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.

Sources

Achua, Justin K., et al. “Histopathology and Ultrastructural Findings of Fatal COVID-19 Infections on Testis.” World Journal of Men’s Health. 3 Nov 2020.

Gonzalez, Daniel C., et al. “Sperm Parameters Before and After COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination.” Journal of the American Medical Association. 17 Jun 2021.

Hilton, Lisette. “COVID-19 Can Infect Testes with Potential Implications for Male Fertility.” Press release, University of Miami Health System. 5 Nov 2020.

Jaramillo, Catalina. “No Evidence Vaccines Impact Fertility.” FactCheck.org. Updated 3 Mar 2021.

“Joint Statement Regarding COVID-19 Vaccine in Men Desiring Fertility from the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology (SMRU) and the Society for the Study of Male Reproduction (SSMR).” Press release, American Society for Reproductive Medicine. 9 Jan 2021.

Masson, Puneet. Director of male reproductive medicine and surgery, Penn Medicine. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 10 Jun 2021.

“Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 3 Jun 2021.

Verma, Saguna. Professor of tropical medicine, University of Hawaii. Email to FactCheck.org. 16 Jun 2021.

Villalpando, Nicole. “Could COVID-19 vaccine cause male infertility? The answer is nuanced.” Austin American-Statesman. 17 May 2021.

Watson, Rachel E., et al. “Fertility considerations: The COVID-19 disease may have a more negative impact than the COVID-19 vaccine, especially among men.” Fertility and Sterility. 19 Mar 2021.

The post Research Rebuts Claims Linking COVID-19 Vaccines to Male Infertility appeared first on FactCheck.org.

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