Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 03/09/2021
The risk of miscarriage is the same in unvaccinated and pregnant women who were vaccinated against covid-19 before pregnancy or in the first trimester, said Milan Reljič, a gynecologist at UKC Maribor.
“The rate of miscarriages in pregnant women who are vaccinated in the first trimester increases eightfold,” US family doctor Vladimir Zelenko said in a video posted on the Stop lažnivim medijem (Stop Media Lies) Facebook page on August 22.
Zelenko, an opponent of Covid-19 vaccination, has developed a mix of drugs to treat the new coronavirus, which includes the antibiotic azithromycin and the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have not approved Zelenko’s mixture for the general treatment of Covid-19.
At EMA, they wrote on the website that clinical studies did not show the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid-19, and they also pointed out its dangerous side effects, which may be exacerbated by mixing with azithromycin.
In the Facebook video, Zelenko listed the alleged side effects of vaccination against Covid-19.
The clip was released on August 5 on the BitChute video sharing platform. According to an analysis conducted in June by SSRN, a network for pre-release of social science research, video channels that publish on this platform spread conspiracy theories and far-right ideology.
Administrators of the Facebook group and the Stop lažnivim medijem (Stop Fake Media) website are anonymous. A bank account number of a local educational association Mislimo (“We are thinking”) is listed at the bottom of the entry page, it is meant for the transfer of donations for legal assistance to people in difficulty.
According to the Slovenian business register, the representative of the association that is focused on education and alternative forms of treatment, among other issues, is Monika Maku, a professor of English and a member of the OPS movement, a group of far-right roots which has become an epicenter of antivax sentiment during the pandemic.
Miscarriage is not more common in vaccinated mothers
In a statement on the alleged covid-19 vaccine risks for pregnant women, Zelenko referred to the preliminary findings of an ongoing study on the safety of mRNA vaccines for pregnant women, published June 17 in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine.
Several reproduction and epidemiology experts, with Tom T. Shimabukur as the first signatory, analyzed the health of 3,958 women aged 16 to 54 who were vaccinated against covid-19 with a mRNA vaccine during pregnancy. The results were obtained on the basis of questionnaires on side effects of vaccines that were filled out by the respondents. This data was compared to the responses of the population of women in the same age group who were not pregnant.
They found that the side effects of the vaccines in pregnant women did not differ significantly from the effects reported by non-pregnant women.
In addition, the outcome of pregnancy was analyzed in 827 vaccinated women who gave birth or had a miscarriage before the end of the preliminary phase of the study. Among them, most pregnancies, 86.1%, ended with the birth of a child, and 12.6% with a miscarriage. Miscarriage also occurs in the general population of pregnant women in 10 to 26% of cases, which means that miscarriage was no more common in vaccinated pregnant women than in unvaccinated ones.
In 92.3% of cases miscarriage in vaccinated pregnant women occurred in the first trimester. This is not unusual, as 80 to 90% of miscarriages occur in the first trimester, according to Milan Reljič, head of the department for reproductive medicine and gynecological endocrinology at UKC Maribor.
Data on the health of children born to vaccinated pregnant women showed that their health status did not deviate from the average in unvaccinated pregnant women before the epidemic. They pointed out that due to the influence of many factors on pregnancy, such as age, ethnicity and social and health circumstances, data on vaccinated pregnant women is not fully comparable with data on unvaccinated women.
The authors pointed out other shortcomings of the research. For example, the majority of pregnant women included in the study who were vaccinated in the first trimester had not yet given birth prior to the publication of preliminary data.
For pregnant women, Covid-19 is more dangerous than the vaccine
There is no data in the study that the probability of miscarriage in pregnant women who are vaccinated in the first trimester is eight times higher than usual, as Zelenko interpreted the results of the study in the video.
Administrators of the Stop Media Lies website did not respond to Razkrinkavanje.si’s questions about their arguments for stating that the covid-19 vaccine increases the chances of miscarriages were not answered.
Reljič said that dr. Zelenko’s statement was based on an intentional or unintentional misinterpretation of the data to which he referred. The academic article, he says, proves just the opposite – that pregnant women who were vaccinated just before pregnancy or in the first trimester of pregnancy are not more likely to have a miscarriage.
According to him, this was also proven by a study published on August 9 on Research Square, another platform for the pre-publication of scientific works. In the study, researchers from the U.S. Government Center for Disease Control and Prevention compared data on miscarriages of 2,456 pregnant women who were vaccinated against covid-19 with mRNA vaccines before pregnancy and before the 20th week of pregnancy with the normal incidence of miscarriage in pregnant women of comparable age. They found that the risk of miscarriage in the vaccinated population was 12.8% and 16% on average in the unvaccinated population.
“Vaccination of pregnant women with mRNA vaccines has proven to be successful and safe, so we recommend it,” said Reljič. According to available data, the risk of a more severe course of covid-19 is higher in pregnant women than in other women. In addition, covid-19 increases the risk of unwanted pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage.
An increased risk of adverse reactions in pregnant women with covid-19 was demonstrated by a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of 192 studies on the course of covid-19 in pregnant women and a pregnancy outcomes study in women hospitalized for covid-19 during pregnancy.
In their opinion on the vaccination of pregnant women against covid-19 from April, the Slovenian Association for Perinatal Medicine pointed out that the risk of a more severe course of the disease in pregnant women is two to four times higher than in non-pregnant women of the same age.
Among other things, they pointed out that pregnant women were not included in clinical studies on the efficacy and safety of covid-19 vaccines, but data on the safety of vaccines for pregnant women has been monitored since the start of vaccination.
The association interpreted the data used by Zelenko differently than he did. Vaccination with mRNAs during pregnancy has been found to be effective and safe according to current data.
Vladimir Zelenko’s claim that the rate of miscarriages in pregnant women vaccinated in the first trimester increases by eightfold is not true.
Translation: Nina Delić