TAMPA, Fla. — In general, women and younger adults are reporting more side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine. So we wanted to give you a sharper insight into why that's the case.
We talked with Dr. Michael Teng with USF Health.
He says we know women have a little bit more of a significant immune response to vaccines. Women are reporting they have sore arms, a fever, chills, aches and are tired.
In general, he says women have stronger pre-existing immunity, so they then have a stronger immune response when they get the shot.
"There's a bunch of hypotheses. One of them is estrogen. Estrogen helps the immune response for these vaccines rather than you know, for men, where we have testosterone instead of estrogen we don't have quite as strong of an immune response," says Dr. Teng.
So what does that mean in the long run? Well, Dr. Teng says we don't know.
But it is something we will learn from the ongoing clinical trials and reporting as more people get vaccinated.