Thread by @VikiLovesFACS

Wondering if antibodies raised against #COVID19 #vaccines can bind to the placental protein syncytin-1 and harm #fertility?

💉👩🏽‍❤️‍👨🏻🤔

Out yesterday! More data that addresses this question!

Spoiler alert: they don’t... 🧵

nature.com/articles/s4142…

But why would anyone even think that such a thing might happen? Is it even worth researching?

The rumours that COVID19 vaccines would impact fertility were started by a vaccine skeptic who proposed that this might occur, so this is something that a lot of ppl may have heard. 2/

People who work in this area never thought this was very likely, for a number of reasons.

Not least, if this did happen COVID 🦠 would be associated with infertility or problems in early pregnancy, and luckily we don’t see that. 3/

https://twitter.com/VikiLovesFACS/status/1339510379332988929?s=20

And this preprint came out in May, showing that antibodies raised by vaccination don't bind syncytin-1. 4/

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

This new study has been peer-reviewed and uses a slightly cleaner assay, which makes the results clearer.

👉🏻 Antibodies from vaccinated people bind to COVID19 spike protein (as expected), but not to syncytin-1. 5/

They also took a look at antibodies from people who had been infected with COVID19 🦠. They also bind to COVID19 spike protein, but not to syncytin-1. 6/

So can we please put to bed this idea that #COVID19 #vaccines can raise an immune response to syncytin-1, harming #fertility?

7/7