My Revolution of PARTs

WASHINGTON: A recent study has quashed rumours that Covid-19 vaccination leads to infertility. The study published in the 'American Journal of Epidemiology' asserts that Covid-19 vaccination does not appear to affect fertility. The prospective study of couples trying to conceive found no association between Covid-19 vaccination and fecundability -- the probability of conception per menstrual cycle -- in female or male partners who received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. In contrast, the findings indicated that Covid-19 infection among males may temporarily reduce fertility -- an outcome that could be avoidable through vaccination. "Many reproductive-aged individuals have cited concerns about fertility as a reason for remaining unvaccinated," said study lead author Dr Amelia Wesselink, research assistant professor of epidemiology at BUSPH. "Our study shows for the first time that Covid-19 vaccination in either partner is unrel...

Why are so many vaccinated people getting Covid-19 lately? A couple of factors are at play, starting with the emergence of the highly contagious Omicron variant. Omicron is more likely to infect people, even if it doesn't make them very sick, and its surge coincided with the holiday travel season in many places. People might mistakenly think the Covid-19 vaccines will completely block infection, but the shots are mainly designed to prevent severe illness, says Louis Mansky, a virus researcher at the University of Minnesota. And the vaccines are still doing their job on that front, particularly for people who've gotten boosters. Two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine still offer strong protection against serious illness from omicron. While those initial doses aren't very good at blocking omicron infection, boosters - particularly with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines - rev up levels of the antibodies to he...

NEW DELHI: Amid rising cases of Covid-19 and its new variant, Omicron, across the globe, experts have warned that the new and supposedly more contagious variant is likely to replace Delta soon as the dominant global variant, with the virus being fitter and having a reproductive advantage. While Delta is still the most common variant in all continents except Africa, Omicron is spreading very quickly. Fully vaccinated people with no travel history have also tested positive for Omicron, raising doubts over effectiveness of the existing Covid-19 vaccines, discussions on the need for a booster dose, and speculations of a third wave. As Omicron is said to have mutations that may be helping it escape the body’s first line of defence, antibodies, studies have highlighted a bigger role that the immune system’s second line of defence, T-cells, may play. T cells, the body's weapon against virus-infected cells, were primed enough by vaccination that they defended against Omicron, separate ...

WASHINGTON: Omicron can evade the immune protection conferred by Covid-19 vaccines and natural infection, according to a peer-reviewed study which also suggests that the new variant of coronavirus is completely resistant to antibody therapies in use today. The study, published in the journal Nature on Thursday, also highlights the need for new vaccines and treatments that anticipate how the SARS-CoV-2 virus may soon evolve. The researchers from Columbia University in the US and the University of Hong Kong noted that a striking feature of Omicron is the alarming number of changes in the variant's spike protein that could pose a threat to the effectiveness of current vaccines and therapeutic antibodies. The study tested the ability of antibodies generated by vaccination to neutralise Omicron in laboratory tests that pitted antibodies against live viruses and against pseudoviruses constructed in the lab to mimic the variant. The researchers found that the antibodies from people do...