Do COVID Vaccines ‘Shed’? Study of Menstrual Irregularities Highlights Need for More Research

Women who didn’t get a COVID-19 vaccine and who hadn’t had a COVID-19 infection reported having many of the same menstrual abnormalities as women who received a COVID-19 vaccine.

by The Defender Staff

Women who didn’t get a COVID-19 vaccine and who hadn’t had a COVID-19 infection reported having many of the same menstrual abnormalities as women who received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a new peer-reviewed study.

The study authors published their findings on Dec. 7 in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.

According to the study, 85.5% of the women reported being within 6 feet of a vaccinated person. Of those, 71.7% had irregular menstrual symptoms within one week and 50.1% had irregular menstrual symptoms within three days after indirect exposure to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Prior research has suggested some women experience menstrual alterations following COVID-19 vaccination, but this is one of the first studies to suggest that unvaccinated women also experience menstrual abnormalities after indirect exposure to the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the study authors.

“To our knowledge,” the study authors wrote in their report, “this is the first human research study to report on associations between proximity to a vaccinated person in daily activities and menstrual irregularities as well as the timing of the onset of menstrual abnormalities after being in close proximity to a vaccinated person.”

The study authors analyzed survey data collected in 2021 from 3,390 women who were unvaccinated against COVID-19 with no prior history of a COVID-19 infection and no symptoms of COVID-19.

Through statistical analyses, the authors examined whether the women’s proximity to people vaccinated against COVID-19 was linked to the women’s risk of menstrual irregularities.

The study authors found that unvaccinated women with no prior history of a COVID-19 infection who had daily close contact — within 6 feet — with people outside their household who were vaccinated against COVID-19 had a statistically significantly higher risk of menstrual irregularities, compared with unvaccinated women with no prior history of a COVID-19 infection who seldom had close contact with vaccinated individuals.

They also found the risk of menstrual irregularities was higher when the contact within 6 feet of a vaccinated non-household person dropped from “daily” to “sometimes.”

However, the study authors found that daily close contact with a vaccinated person in the same household as the unvaccinated person didn’t increase the unvaccinated woman’s risk of menstrual irregularities.

Unvaccinated women with no prior history of a COVID-19 infection who had daily close contact with a vaccinated household member or romantic partner weren’t at greater risk of menstrual irregularities, compared with unvaccinated women with no prior history of a COVID-19 infection who seldom had close contact with vaccinated individuals.

According to the report:

“The study team hypothesized that the closer one is to a vaccinated person on a daily basis, the higher the relative risk of abnormal symptoms. This was not our finding. The analyses of the proximity dyad of ‘Partner/Live with vaccinated person’ vs. ‘Seldom/Sometimes/Daily outside 6 feet’ revealed an unexpected significant protective effect for heavy menstrual clotting of the closest day-to-day exposure with a vaccinated partner/cohabitating companion.

“However, the significant and highest relative risk across several symptoms, including heavier bleeding (34%), early period onset (28%), and extended bleeding (26%), was for those who were exposed to the vaccinated daily and within 6 feet, but outside of the household.

“One possible explanation for this result is that daily exposure to a larger public group of vaccinated individuals could increase the concentration and duration of exposure to vaccine components being transmitted in the environment.”

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker told The Defender that the study’s findings “provide evidence suggesting COVID-19 vaccine shedding may be happening,” but that the study’s results “do not prove” that shedding is occurring.

COVID-19 vaccine shedding refers to the “indirect transmission of ingredients or products in the COVID-19 vaccine,” according to the study.

Hooker, a co-author of the study, added:

“This important study affirms that women exposed to individuals outside their household who received modified mRNA jabs for COVID-19 indeed experienced significantly higher levels of menstrual issues than women who weren’t in close proximity with COVID-19 vaccinated individuals outside their household.”

Dr. Pierre Kory, president emeritus and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, wrote on Substack that the study “makes a highly compelling case that shedding is occurring and is causing menstrual illness in a subset of patients sensitive to close exposures to the vaccinated.”

Kory said many of his patients reported having flare-ups of new and chronic symptoms shortly after social outings or close contact with individuals who were recently vaccinated against COVID-19.

More research on shedding needs to be done

The study authors pointed out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2015 issued guidance for conducting shedding studies for virus or bacteria-based gene therapies.

However, no such studies were conducted before the rollout of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

“Why didn’t our regulatory agencies conduct shedding studies before mass product rollout?” wrote Nicolas Hulscher, an epidemiologist at the McCullough Foundation, in a Substack post about the study.

“This and many other critical questions demand immediate answers from federal authorities,” Hulscher said.

The study authors said their findings “support the need for shedding studies for current and future gene therapy products, as detailed in the 2015 FDA guidance.”

“Over the past four years, women have continually been gaslighted, censored and silenced by the media, the medical system and the government agencies regarding their experiences with the COVID-19 shot,” said Heather Ray, science and research analyst/administrator with CHD. “It is time to start taking these women seriously and figure out what is happening to our mothers, sisters and daughters.”

The study authors cited research that discussed how components of the COVID-19 vaccine could conceivably be transmitted. “There is accumulating evidence that there can be vaccine component or antibody transmission following COVID-19 vaccination, including via exhaled breath aerosol.”

However, very little peer-reviewed research has focused on understanding what happens if and when COVID-19 vaccine components are transmitted to an unvaccinated person. “This report suggests a need for increased funding and research in this area.”

Sue Peters, Ph.D., a co-first author of the study, told The Defender, “In my view, the most important outcome of this study is the critical need to test biodistribution and shedding effects of any gene therapy, as a human right to informed consent.”

Survey launched after Facebook deleted women’s posts about menstrual irregularities

In their report, the study authors explain that the survey results they analyzed came from a nonprofit called MyCycleStory that wanted to ensure women’s voices were heard — especially when it came to speaking out about changes they were noticing in their menstrual cycle during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

Tiffany Parotto, MyCycleStory’s founder and president and a co-author on the study, wrote in a post for Millions Against Mandates that a Facebook group containing over 20,000 members who were sharing personal testimonies about changes to their menstrual cycle soon after the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was deleted in 2021.

“The need to research these occurrences and give a voice to the women who were silenced was obvious,” Parotto wrote.

That’s when the MyCycleStory survey was created, she said. “It was imperative to capture these testimonies and bring the desperately needed conversation back to life.”

The 91-question survey aimed at understanding and quantifying women’s menstrual experiences during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

More than 6,000 women completed the survey from May 16, 2021, to December 31, 2021. They were 18-85 years old, with an average age of 38 years.

The researchers focused their analyses on the 3,390 survey respondents who said they did not get a COVID-19 vaccine.

A limitation of the study is that it uses self-reported data, which some researchers have found to be less reliable than other types of data. The people who are self-reporting — in this case, the women who completed the survey — could be biased in their recall of events.

The study authors noted, however, that self-report data is considered the gold standard for collecting menstrual cycle information. Hooker also noted that many questions on the survey — conducted by a marketing firm that specializes in this type of survey — were not just regarding the relationship between menstrual issues and vaccine “shedding.”

Hooker said, “This would have the effect of minimizing recall bias at least somewhat.”

Another limitation of the study, Peters told The Defender, was that it used a convenience sample of women who heard about the survey from word-of-mouth and social media.

“A population-based study using data from menstruation tracking apps and devices prior to the pandemic and prior to the vaccine could offer a more balanced approach,” she said. “However this was not available to the research team at the critical time period when the survey was distributed.”

Peters said it was unlikely that the research team would have swiftly secured funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to improve its study design, as the NIH didn’t begin funding research abnormalities in the vaccinated until August 2021.

Peters said the survey results reflect a “unique moment in time, which may never be replicated.” In early 2021, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — “which had not been through rigorous testing” — were rolled out to a large population in a short amount of time.

Since early spring of 2021, large numbers of women have been reporting menstrual abnormalities, Peters said. “What was most perplexing for those clinicians who attempted to help these women were those that reported symptom onset during the initial mass vaccination campaign, but were not vaccinated.”

“This stand-alone human study — even within the limits of a survey self-report design and no funding support — provides a stronger voice for these women, within the scientific, medical, and regulatory agencies,” Peters said.