Pfizer COVID vaccine reduces sperm quality, study shows

A study has revealed that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine reduces sperm quality — including sperm concentration and total motility count (the total number of moving sperm in a sample).

The authors of the study however concluded the negative effect of the Pfizer vaccine on sperm quality was temporary. However, some people who examined the data behind the study questioned that conclusion.

Pfizer’s preclinical data from animal studies also showed small amounts of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine end up in the ovaries and testes after injection.

The researchers conducted the retrospective longitudinal multicenter study at three sperm banks in Israel. Thirty-seven sperm donors provided 220 semen samples.

The study participants had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccine, were negative for SARS-CoV-2 based on PCR or serological tests and did not have any symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

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One or more samples were obtained at the following time points: T0 = the baseline, before vaccination; T1 = 15-45 days after vaccination; T2 = 75-150 days after vaccination; T3 = 150 days or more after vaccination.

The authors measured the volume of the semen sample, the sperm concentration in the sample, sperm motility and the total motile count. The total motile count refers to the total number of moving sperm in the sample.

The authors found no significant change in the above parameters between T1 and T0 (baseline).

At T2 (75 to 150 days after vaccination), sperm concentration was significantly lower due to a decrease of -15.4% compared to T0. The total mobile count was also reduced by 22.1%, significantly lower compared to T0.

“Although concentration and TMC [total motile count] were reduced also on T3, these values did not reach statistical significance (table 2).”

Not everyone who examined the data agreed with study’s conclusions

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The researchers wrote that the impact of Pfizer’s mRNA shot on sperm concentration and total motile count was temporary and that it was statistically significant only at T2, 75 to 150 days after vaccination, at which point the sperm quality recovered.

More troubling, Berenson and other writers said, the paper’s data may not support the researcher’s assertion that sperm concentration and total motile count returned to normal after five months.

“In fact,” wrote Berenson, “by some measures, levels continued to decline.”

As previously mentioned, at T2 (75-150 days post vaccination), sperm concentration and total motile count are both down. The authors considered a p-value of less than 0.05 to be statistically significant and bolded the table entries for sperm concentration and total motile count at T2.

However, these numbers hardly show the “recovery” to normal sperm parameters that the researchers claim. This may warrant requesting the original data, and the p-values for the T3 entries.

In addition, T3 was the last sampling time, at least 150 days (5 months) post vaccination, with the average sample taken 175 days after vaccination, plus or minus 27 days.

So the longest time between vaccination and sampling was 202 days, just under 7 months. What happens more than 7 months later?

The change in sperm motility was presented as an absolute change from T0, and was down at T2, but just above the authors’ cutoff for significance. It is even further down at T3, but presumably this also did not reach statistical significance, since no p-value is reported.

Rather than acknowledging this, Berenson wrote, “The authors offered the best possible spin on their data, while at the same time publishing the figures themselves near the end of the paper so that other researchers could see the reality for themselves.”