{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pbio.3001506","title":"No evidence of fetal defects or anti-syncytin-1 antibody induction following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination","abstract":"The impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA vaccination on pregnancy and fertility has become a major topic of public interest. We investigated 2 of the most widely propagated claims to determine (1) whether COVID-19 mRNA vaccination of mice during early pregnancy is associated with an increased incidence of birth defects or growth abnormalities; and (2) whether COVID-19 mRNA-vaccinated human volunteers exhibit elevated levels of antibodies to the human placental protein syncytin-1. Using a mouse model, we found that intramuscular COVID-19 mRNA vaccination during early pregnancy at gestational age E7.5 did not lead to differences in fetal size by crown-rump length or weight at term, nor did we observe any gross birth defects. In contrast, injection of the TLR3 agonist and double-stranded RNA mimic polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid, or poly(I:C), impacted growth in utero leading to reduced fetal size. No overt maternal illness following either vaccination or poly(I:C) exposure was observed. We also found that term fetuses from these murine pregnancies vaccinated prior to the formation of the definitive placenta exhibit high circulating levels of anti-spike and anti-receptor-binding domain (anti-RBD) antibodies to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) consistent with maternal antibody status, indicating transplacental transfer in the later stages of pregnancy after early immunization. Finally, we did not detect increased levels of circulating anti-syncytin-1 antibodies in a cohort of COVID-19 vaccinated adults compared to unvaccinated adults by ELISA. Our findings contradict popular claims associating COVID-19 mRNA vaccination with infertility and adverse neonatal outcomes.","journal":"PLoS Biology","year":2022,"id":270202,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":14,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.966,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":557460,"name":"Alexandra Tabachnikova","orcid":"0000-0003-4695-2480","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":852667,"name":"Eddy Pérez-Then","orcid":"0000-0001-7724-0668","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105759,"name":"Maria Tokuyama","orcid":"0000-0002-9568-9300","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":622915,"name":"Hannah Lee","orcid":"0000-0003-2566-8632","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105754,"name":"Carolina Lucas","orcid":"0000-0003-4590-2756","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":933951,"name":"Valter Silva Monteiro","orcid":"0000-0003-1785-6713","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":933952,"name":"Marija Miric","orcid":"0000-0002-1626-5607","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":666407,"name":"Vivian Brache","orcid":"0000-0003-2621-4739","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":667217,"name":"Leila Cochón","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105803,"name":"M. 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