Billions of dollars and basically all other currencies are being spent on IVF, the treatment providing complicated medical and lab options to have a child in case you face issues conceiving the child naturally. With Covid-19, millions of women are being afraid of the spike of “new reasons” for infertility, caused by the vaccine, believed to interfere, meaning harm DNA. It remains almost a mystery, why we pay so much attention to hoaxes and facts, that are easily proven wrong and do not act in matters already having negative impact on our fertility. We could avoid them at amazingly little costs. The key word is prevention. Infertility has almost none of it and those, such as the network in-fertility, who believe in fertility education of teens and ask those responsible to intervene, are still strange among all the rest, only speaking about assisted reproduction and IVF treatment.

Let us look at both, the origin of the vaccine speculations as well as the newest information on DEHP effects on DNA. Originally there was a misleading statement that the coronavirus’s spike protein contained within the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was similar to a protein called syncytin-1, involved in forming the placenta, followed by speculations that this might cause antibodies against the virus to attack a developing pregnancy, too. Many believe this is the origin of the belief that Covid vaccines might harm fertility, which, unfortunately, is currently still spread even by a group of doctors. The fact, now supported by evidence gathered to disprove this theory is that syncytin-1 and the coronavirus’s spike protein are just about as similar as any two random proteins so there is no real reason to believe the body might confuse them. US fertility doctor Randy Morris began monitoring his patients who were undergoing IVF treatment to see whether vaccination made any difference to their chances of a successful pregnancy. Out of 143 people in Dr Morris’s study, vaccinated, unvaccinated and previously infected women were about equally likely to have a successful embryo implantation and for the pregnancy to continue to term. The women were similar in most other respects.

The study is small, but it adds to a large volume of other evidence — and were the claim true, you would expect that to show up even in a study of this size. Dr Morris pointed out that people spreading these fears had not explained why they believed antibodies produced in response to the vaccine could harm fertility but the same antibodies from a natural infection would not.

Meanwhile the researchers at Harvard Medical School and the New York State Department of Health have discovered how a common plasticizer associated with human reproductive abnormalities likely does its damage at the molecular level. DEHP, short for di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate — a chemical added to many plastics to make them flexible, was for years linked to health issues, especially reproductive abnormalities, such as birth defects and male infertility. The governments and health institutions are trying to regulate and limit the content of DEHP and other phthalates in household items as they are in children’s toys, food packaging, drinking water, and other items. They can be found in medical devices, but also in your shampoo.

So what is it what really does harm DNA? Monica Colaiácovo, professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues recently reported, that DEHP disrupts meiosis — the type of cell division that results in eggs and sperm — in several ways, leading to defects during egg formation and very early embryonic development. The insights could have implications for those who are pregnant or of reproductive age, for regulation of DEHP and other phthalates, and for the ongoing development of “green chemicals” intended to replace phthalates. DEHP appears to alter chromosome length and relax the structure of chromatin, exposing DNA to potential breakage. This goes hand in hand with change in the numbers of chromosomes. In people, such abnormalities cause more than 35 percent of miscarriages and 4 percent of stillbirths, as well as infertility and conditions such as Down syndrome. The results obvious in the lab: breaks aren’t properly repaired during meiosis, chromosomes have abnormal morphology, eggs contain the wrong number of chromosomes, and embryos are less viable.

Next time you buy anything from plastic, any cosmetics or any detergents, please, make sure you pay at least so much attention to what it contains as you do to the Covid-19 vaccines online. It can save you… a lot.