Coronavirus vaccines effective for pregnant women and newborns: Study
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The researchers also observed that these women passed on the protective antibodies to their newborns, in form of breast milk and placenta
Putting a lot of concerns to rest, scientists have assured people that coronavirus vaccines are effective even in pregnancies.
Experts at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard have published research in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The researchers collected information from 131 women who had received either the Moderna or the Pfizer-BioNtech coronavirus vaccine.
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Of these 131, 84 women were pregnant, 31 were lactating and 16 were not pregnant. The researchers collected data between December 17, 2020, and March 02, 2021.
In all the women, the vaccine-induced antibody levels were the same, be it pregnant, lactating or non-pregnant women.
"These vaccines seem to work incredibly effectively in these women," said Galit Alter, a professor of medicine at the Ragon Institute.
The researchers also observed that these women passed on the protective antibodies to their newborns, in form of breast milk and placenta.
"Nearly all the moms were getting a pretty decent level of antibodies to their babies," Alter said. However, it is not yet clear as to how long will these protective antibodies last in newborns.
It has also been observed that the antibody levels were "strikingly higher" in comparison to coronavirus infection during pregnancy.
To reach this conclusion, the participants had been asked to use the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's V-safe tool that allows people to track reaction after receiving a jab of the coronavirus vaccine.
As of now, CDC warns that pregnant women with coronavirus are at a higher risk for severe illness and adverse outcomes. CDC is aiming to study vaccine safety in nearly 13,000 pregnant women for all the authorised vaccines.
"This is an urgent need, because we're not only protecting one person in this vaccine effort, we're protecting two people at the same time," Alter said.