Association Between Menstrual Cycle Disturbances and COVID-19 Vaccination Among Women in Saudi Arabia: A National Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract After COVID-19 vaccination, women who had received one or more doses of COVID-19 vaccination reported a higher scores describing average and worst menstrual pain. Our results illustrated that (61.5%) of the total sample had a menstrual cycle irregularity after the COVID-19 vaccination particularly, high rate after the third dose by about (32.7%). Of them, (88.3%) referred these changes to the vaccine rather than the infection, with different reported possible reasons, among most important reasons; the changes they actually experienced after COVID-19 vaccines even though the period was regular before the vaccine (66.8%), these changes were resolved spontaneously without the need to visit the hospital. This can be linked to the psychological status, as it was noticed and reported in our investigation that there was a significant improvement in the psychological status after the lockdown than it was during the lockdown with (p=0.013), the certain relationship is not fully clear yet but our findings might be helpful to be utilized for further future studies to understand the underlying mechanisms for these associations