By Tina Aswani Omprakash
Originally published in Everyday Health on January 8th, 2021
We open the new year with hope after a dreary year filled with ups and downs from the COVID-19 pandemic. As a woman with Crohn’s disease, a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), I have been practicing every precaution recommended by my doctor, from masking up to practicing social distancing and avoiding crowded, indoor spaces.
While I’m used to being home a lot as a result of surgeries related to my disease and regular flare-ups, the pandemic was doubly hard for me because I have been in remission, and in good health to go out and about. Sadly, the pandemic had other plans.
So when the news of the high efficacy rates of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines hit the airwaves back in November, it was music to my ears. I thought to myself, finally there is hope! Finally, we may turn a corner! While I am planning on getting the vaccine as soon as it becomes available to me, I have been hearing a lot of vaccine hesitancy from the IBD community.
Fellow patients have been reaching out to me for the past few weeks, asking for my opinion as an IBD patient advocate on the vaccines. People want to know how the vaccines work, if there is enough trial data to prove that it is safe for IBD patients regardless of their medication, if the vaccine will cause IBD symptoms to flare, if it will affect fertility, and on and on. I was so busy fielding questions that I didn’t even have time to take a break over the holidays.
As I received question after question, I realized that I needed to roll up my sleeves and learn everything I possibly could around these vaccines to provide my community with answers.
So I reached out to Meenakshi Bewtra, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and an assistant professor of epidemiology in biostatistics and epidemiology, for answers.
To read the rest of my interview with Dr. Bewtra, kindly visit: https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/health-answers/demystifying-the-covid-vaccine-for-ibd-patients/
