The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded grants to five universities to study whether or not there is a link between having abnormal periods and the COVID-19 vaccine.
In the U.S., there have been thousands of accounts of women who have gotten vaccinated against the virus and later had periods that came earlier usual, felt heavier or just appeared irregular.
And a report from The Sunday Times in June found that 4,000 women in the UK had temporary changes in their menstrual cycles after getting vaccinated.
Now, the federal health agency has distributed one-year supplemental grants totaling $1.67 million to Boston University, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University and Oregon Health and Science University.
The five studies will likely recruit between 400,000 and 500,000 participants, including adolescents, transgender women and nonbinary people, Dr Diana Bianchi, director of the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, told The Washington Post.
The NIH has awarded five universities one-year supplemental grants totaling $1.67 million to study links between irregular periods and COVID-19 vaccines. Pictured:
'These rigorous scientific studies will improve our understanding of the potential effects of COVID-19 vaccines on menstruation, giving people who menstruate more information about what to expect after vaccination and potentially reducing vaccine hesitancy,' Bianchi said in a statement.
According to a DailyMail.com analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, there have been 2,939 reports of women reporting irregular bleeding following the vaccine.
'I was due for my menstruation cycle but when it came, I began to bleed heavily,' one person reported to the CDC, according to the Chicago Tribune.
'This is not a norm for me - my periods are usually light with spotting at the beginning of my
