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Pregnant women are understandably reluctant to take any unnecessary medications while carrying a child, and so the uptake rate of flu vaccines in that group is less than many doctors would like to see.
We’ve reports of 3 studies, recently presented at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) in Philadelphia, that indicate benefits of seasonal flu vaccination to the mother and unborn child, that will hopefully improve the rate of vaccination.
With pregnant women more than 6 times more likely to be hospitalized with the pandemic H1N1 virus than other groups, and the poor outcomes that many pregnant women have experienced with this infection, vaccination of pregnant women against influenza has taken on a greater urgency this fall.
Two reports, first from ABC News, and then an excerpt from a longer report by Maryn McKenna at CIDRAP.
Flu Vaccine Benefits Moms and Babies
Doctors May Recommend Flu Shot To Pregnant Patients, Research Suggests
By MICHAEL SMITH
MedPage Today North American Correspondent
For pregnant women, an influenza vaccination leads to bigger babies and infants who are less likely to get the flu, according to three studies presented here.
For pregnant women, an influenza vaccination leads to bigger babies and infants who are less likely to get the flu, according to three studies presented at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Experts said the findings -- presented at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America -- might help persuade pregnant women reluctant to get a flu shot.
It might also bring the issue to the attention of obstetricians, who typically do not raise the notion of a flu shot with their patients, said Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist and chair of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.
"This is powerful information for obstetricians and pregnant women to have," said Schaffner, who moderated a news conference at which the studies were discussed.
The findings are all the more persuasive, he said, because different investigators, using varied methods, "all came out with the same answer."
Statins may help patients with severe seasonal flu
Maryn McKenna
Contributing Writer
Vaccine benefits in pregnant women
Protection against flu was also recorded in two separate pieces of research announced Thursday. Researchers from Emory University, the Georgia Division of Public Health and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center found that seasonal flu vaccination during pregnancy reduced the chance that a woman would give birth prematurely or to a baby of low birth weight.
That is probably because infections— even mild ones in which the mother does not realize she is ill—reduce the amount of nutrition that flows from mother to fetus, said co-author Dr. Mark Steinhoff of Cincinnati Children’s. But the authors said women are not taking advantage of that protection: There were 6,410 births during the 2-year study, but only 15% of the mothers had been vaccinated during their pregnancies.
In a separate paper, researchers from Yale University School of Medicine found that seasonal flu vaccination during pregnancy appears to protect infants from serious disease during their first 6 months of life, when they cannot receive flu vaccine. In an ongoing, matched case-control study of infants hospitalized for flu or for other reasons, flu vaccine given to the mothers during pregnancy was 85% effective in preventing infants from being hospitalized.
