For years – including in Austria – pregnant women have been strongly advised to be vaccinated against the flu to protect themselves against serious diseases. An American study now shows that this immunization also protects newborns and babies in the first six months.
The study was led by Leila Sahni of the pediatric department at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and was recently published in the American journal JAMA Pediatrics. Sahni and her co-authors examined how effective influenza vaccination during pregnancy is in protecting babies under six months of age from serious infections that require hospitalization or emergency room treatment.
According to the German Medical Journal, the scientists used data from the New Vaccine Surveillance Network for the flu waves from 2016/2017 to 2019/2020 for the study. 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.
Data from almost 3,800 newborns analyzed
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 around 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.
According to the results of the American study, the flu vaccination of pregnant women is also a classic example of the prevention of serious diseases. Babies born to immunized mothers were nearly 40 percent less likely to be hospitalized for the flu and nearly 20 percent less likely to require emergency room treatment.
Up to 53 percent vaccination effectiveness
“In newborns under three months, the effectiveness of the vaccination 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. However, when vaccinated in the first or second trimester of pregnancy, the protective effect was only 17 percent.
Source: Krone
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