Getting the COVID-19 vaccine doesn't affect a couple's chances of becoming pregnant, but skipping the shots and getting infection might reduce male fertility, according to a new study.

"Many reproductive-aged individuals have cited concerns about fertility as a reason for remaining unvaccinated," said Amelia Wesselink, lead author of the study and a research assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health.

The vaccination rate among pregnant people has remained low in the United States, despite new data suggesting that being unvaccinated increases the chances of a miscarriage or of a baby dying within the first month of life.

"Our study shows, for the first time, that COVID-19 vaccination in either partner is unrelated to fertility among couples trying to conceive through intercourse," says Wesselink. "Time-to-pregnancy was very similar regardless of vaccination status."

On the other hand, researchers found that men who had tested positive for COVID-19 showed reduced fertility within 60 days post-infection.

Body of Knowledge

Childhood growth spurts have a seasonality aspect to them. Kids seem to grow fastest in the summer and slowest in the fall, though researchers don't have a good explanation for the phenomenon.

Get Me That, Stat!

Nearly two-thirds of boys and girls in the United States ages 2-17 spend more than two hours of screen time each weekday, in addition to screen time spent for schoolwork, according to the 2020 National Health Interview Survey.

Doc Talk

Transient diaphragmatic spasm: getting the wind knocked out of you

Mania of the Week

Mythomania: the tendency to lie, exaggerate or relate incredible imaginary adventures as if they had really happened, occurring in some mental disorders

Food for Thought

Ammonium sulfate is primarily used as a fertilizer and conditioner for alkaline soils and as an adjuvant for water-soluble insecticides, herbicides and fungicides because it helps bind those chemicals to plants. It's also found in flours and breads because it conditions and strengthens dough.

Best Medicine

My friend keeps saying, "Cheer up, it could be worse. You could be stuck underground in a hole full of water." I know he means well.

Observation

"The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead." — American author Michael Pollan (1955-)

Medical History

This week in 1984, a 12-year-old boy publicly identified only as David touched his mother for the first time after he was removed from a plastic "bubble." He died two weeks later.

Born with a rare disorder called severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and so lacking T-cells, David Vetter had lived since birth in a protective, germ-free environment.

Earlier in 1984, he underwent an experimental bone marrow transplant from his sister to prompt his body to produce T-cells. The transplant was not rejected, but he became ill with a viral infection and died on Feb. 22. The autopsy revealed that Katherine's bone marrow contained traces of the dormant virus Epstein-Barr, which wasn't detected in the pre-transplant screening.

Perishable Publications

Many, if not most, published research papers have titles that defy comprehension. They use specialized jargon, complex words and opaque phrases like "nonlinear dynamics." Sometimes they don't, yet they're still hard to figure out. Here's an actual title of actual published research study: "Sniffing out significant 'Pee values': genome wide association study of asparagus anosmia."

Published in 2016 in the British Medical Journal, the researchers sought to answer why some people can smell stinky urine after eating asparagus and others cannot. It's a complicated answer. The distinctive smell of post-asparagus urine is caused by digestive breakdown of asparagusic acid, found only in asparagus. When you pee, the sulfurous byproducts of asparagusic acid evaporate almost immediately, causing you to smell it.

But many people cannot smell it. They have "asparagus anosmia," due to genetic variations that inhibit the ability of olfactory cells in the nose to detect all scents.

Self-Exam

Q: Which animal is hairiest?

a) Otters

b) Chimpanzees

c) Humans

d) Dogs

A: In this group, it's definitely the otter, at approximately 1 million hairs per square inch. Dogs have roughly 15,000 hairs per square inch, on average. Humans and chimpanzees are generally similar, at around 800 to 1,290 hairs per square inch. The difference is that most human hair on most of our bodies is very fine and nearly invisible.

Curtain Calls

In Brazil, an 88-year-old hospitalized woman died after a nursing technician mistakenly injected her with soup rather than into a feeding tube. The woman died 12 hours later of a pulmonary embolism, or blood clot in her lungs.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: fezailc at Pixabay