Can you take Tylenol, Ibuprofen, after taking the COVID vaccine?

As COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out across the country, you may be wondering if it is OK to take painkillers before or after the shot.

These vaccines can, after all, produce side effects that cause pain and discomfort, although they tend to go away within a few days.

The most common problems people experience are pain and swelling at the injection site, while recipients may also experience fever, fatigue, chills or headaches.

For most people, health experts recommend not taking pre-existing painkillers such as aspirin, acetaminophen (eg Tylenol) and ibuprofen (eg Motrin, Advil) before receiving a vaccine.

This is because there is a chance that this medicine may blunt your immune response to the vaccine, which reduces the body’s ability to build defenses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.

However, people who regularly use one of these medications for another medical condition should continue to do so as needed. Stopping the medicine in these cases can cause unintended problems.

After receiving a vaccination, anyone who has symptoms that make them feel uncomfortable can take this medication, as long as the right doses are adhered to, experts say.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention recommends that you talk to your doctor to see if you should take this medicine if you experience pain or discomfort after receiving a shot.

The side effects caused by these vaccines are the result of activating the body’s immune response – this is the purpose of the shot. In essence, the vaccines teach the body how to identify and neutralize the virus should exposure occur.

However, there is no investigation into how drugs such as paracetamol and ibuprofen can specifically affect the action of COVID-19 vaccines, hence the expert recommendations not to pre-medicate.

“We do not recommend premedication with ibuprofen or Tylenol for COVID-19 vaccines, due to the lack of data on how it affects antibody responses,” said Dr. Simone Wildes, an infectious disease specialist at South Shore Medical Center and a member of the COVID-19 vaccine advisory group in Massachusetts, told ABC News.

Antibodies are proteins produced by the immune system that fight pathogens. COVID-19 vaccines cause the body to generate antibodies specifically targeted to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

There is evidence from previous research on vaccines for other diseases that are used with painkillers beforehand before a shot can numb the body’s immune response.

“There are data in the vaccine literature, which took COVID-19 long and almost all [done] in children, that premedication with [fever-reducing drugs] such as paracetamol or ibuprofen, reduces the antibody response to the first dose of vaccine, “Dr. David J. Cennimo, an infectious disease physician and assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told Healthline.

Despite findings like these, it is not clear what the real effects of the pre-medication with painkillers are before the vaccination is taken, on the action of the shot.