Flu vaccination during pregnancy affects babies

A flu vaccination during pregnancy also protects newborns. According to a study in the American journal Jama Pediatrics, babies born to immunized mothers were almost 40 percent less likely to be hospitalized due to flu than babies born to unvaccinated mothers.

They also had to be treated in the emergency room almost 20 percent less often. According to the results of the American study, the flu vaccination of pregnant women is a classic example of the prevention of serious diseases.

For the study, scientists from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas used data from the New Vaccine Surveillance Network for the flu waves from 2016/2017 to 2019/2020, as Deutsche Ärzteblatt wrote. The analysis included infants younger than six months who were treated in the emergency room or hospitalized for an acute respiratory illness at seven children’s hospitals in the United States.

In total, data from 3764 newborns were analyzed, of which 223 had influenza. The mothers of the 2007 children had been vaccinated. The protection rate against infections with influenza viruses among babies was relatively high at approximately 34 percent. This is due to the transfer of protective antibodies from the expectant mother to the unborn child. Depending on the age group, protection rates of 40 to 80 percent are recorded for those directly vaccinated.

“In newborns under three months of age, vaccination effectiveness was 53 percent,” the medical journal wrote. The effect was particularly high: 52 percent in babies born to mothers who were vaccinated during the last trimester of pregnancy. When vaccinated in the first or second trimester of pregnancy, the protective effect was only 17 percent. (sda/apa)