If the Covid-19 disease has not finished revealing all its mysteries, the same may be true for vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Indeed, more than two years after the start of the vaccination campaign in France, a new adverse effect of vaccines has been identified: the urgent need to urinate.
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[EN VIDÉO] What does urine color reveal about your health? Normally, urine is always yellow in color. In some cases, however, the urine is brown, red, green or fluorescent yellow. What does this mean and should you be concerned?
To date, 79.7% of the French population has received two doses of vaccine (complete primary vaccination) and 59.5% received 3 doses. The vaccines against Covid-19 are feared and rejected by part of the population. These people fear, among other things, the occurrence of adverse effects that could not have been observed during clinical tests. If most of the undesirable effects occurring at the time of or in the days following the injection are now perfectly known and described — pain at the injection site, fever, fatigue, headaches, muscle aches, chills — a new, more unexpected side effect has recently been revealed. These are urinary disorders. The work, from a Taiwanese team, was published in the journal Journal of Clinical Medicine.
How was the study conducted?
The data was collected through an online questionnaire, anonymously (n=889). All subjects were vaccinated with one of the vaccines authorized in Taiwan (Moderna n=89, Pfizer-BioNTech n=171, Astra Zeneca n=586, Medigene Vaccine Biologic n=43). The questions focused on urinary adverse effects. The items were: frequency diurnal ofemission urine, frequency nocturnal urination, urgent need to urinate, urinary incontinence. Elements relating to age, gender, comorbidities, vaccine received, history of urinary problems. Seventy-one patients (8%) suffered from urinary problems before the vaccination.
Urinary disorders in 13.4% of respondents
In summary, 119 (13.4%) subjects experienced urinary adverse effects, of which 49 (5.5%) required medical consultation. The symptoms described were: a pressing need and an increase in the frequency of urination. Unsurprisingly, people who were already prone to urinary problems before vaccination were more likely to have a urinary adverse effect after vaccination than others.
What are the causes ?
The authors have no certain explanation for this phenomenon, but several hypotheses can be put forward. On the one hand, the immune system is strongly stimulated after vaccination and this could have consequences on the composition of urine. On the other hand, vaccination triggers an inflammatory process which could have consequences on the muscles of the bladder ; this could explain the symptoms described by patients after vaccination. Nevertheless, further research is needed on the subject to understand the underlying mechanisms.
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