Since the COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed across the country, you may be wondering if it is okay to take painkillers before or after receiving an injection.
After all, these vaccines can produce side effects that cause pain and discomfort, although they tend to be minor and should disappear within a few days.
The most common problems that people experience are pain and swelling at the injection site, while recipients may also experience fever, tiredness, chills or a headache.
For most people, health experts recommend not to medicate with over-the-counter pain relievers such as aspirin, acetaminophen (eg, Tylenol) and ibuprofen (eg, Motrin, Advil) before receiving the vaccine.
This is because there is a chance that these drugs may dull your immune response to the vaccine, reducing the body’s ability to build defenses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.
However, people who regularly take one of these medications for another medical condition should continue to do so as needed. Stopping medications in these cases can cause unwanted problems.
After receiving the vaccine, anyone who has symptoms that bother them can take these drugs, as long as the correct doses are followed, experts say.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends talking to your doctor to see if you should take these medications if you experience pain or discomfort after receiving an injection.
The side effects caused by these vaccines are the result of the body’s immune response being activated – which is the intended purpose of the injection. Essentially, vaccines teach the body to identify and neutralize the virus in the event of exposure.
But there is no research examining how drugs like paracetamol and ibuprofen can interfere with the functioning of COVID-19 vaccines specifically, hence the experts’ recommendations for not premedication.
“We do not recommend premedication with ibuprofen or Tylenol before COVID-19 vaccines due to a lack of data on how this affects the vaccine-induced antibody responses,” Dr. Simone Wildes, an infectious disease specialist at South Shore Medical Center and a member of the COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Group in Massachusetts, he told ABC News.
Antibodies are proteins produced by the immune system that fight pathogens. COVID-19 vaccines induce the body to generate antibodies that specifically target the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
There is some evidence from previous research on vaccines for other illnesses that premedication with painkillers before an injection can dull the body’s immune response.
“There are data in the literature on vaccines, long before COVID-19 and almost all [done] in children, that premedication with [fever-reducing drugs] how acetaminophen or ibuprofen decreases the antibody response to the first dose of the vaccine, “Dr. David J. Cennimo, an infectious physician and assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told Healthline.
Despite findings like these, it is unclear what the real-world impacts of premedication with painkillers are before getting the vaccine on how the injection works.
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