women affected by menstrual disorders invited to declare them in a form

The Medicines Agency appeals to women affected by menstrual disorders since their vaccination against Covid-19. It invites them to declare these disorders on the site of the Ministry of Health by providing “the most detailed information possible in the declaration form”. To help fill out the form, the ANSM put online, on Tuesday July 19, a guide to help with reporting as well as tutorials for patients and healthcare professionals. The elements collected must allow “the regional pharmacovigilance centers to carry out their evaluation of declared cases in the most efficient way possible”.

So far, the Medicines Agency says it has received more than 10,000 testimonies on this subject: 9,381 with the Pfizer vaccine, and 1,557 with the Moderna vaccine. But it is still unclear whether there is a link between these disorders and messenger RNA vaccines.

At this stage, adverse events most often remain “not serious” and generally manifest themselves in two ways: by abnormal bleeding (metrorrhagia, menorrhagia), and by delayed menstruation or amenorrhea, underlines the agency. To date, the available data do not make it possible to describe the mechanism of occurrence of these menstrual cycle disorders, she adds.

However, she cites several hypotheses such as reactogenicity (fever, headache, nausea, etc.) caused by vaccination which could, as during an infection, influence the hormones involved in the menstrual cycle. Or even a significant stress, caused by the act of vaccination, likely to disturb the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis which regulates the smooth running of the menstrual cycle.