Study Suggests Link Between COVID-19 Shots and Offspring of Vaccinated Rats

‘Caution should be exercised in generalizing these results to humans,’ the report authors wrote.

A 6-year-old child is comforted by her mother as she receives her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Novi, Michigan, on Nov. 3, 2021. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

A study from Turkey found that female rats injected with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were more likely to give birth to male offspring that exhibited symptoms associated with autism and lower neuronal counts in the brain.

The report authors called for further research, stressing that the results could not be extrapolated to humans at this stage.