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Pregnant and breastfeeding women have been intentionally excluded from clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines. But a new study offers reassuring data for pregnant or breastfeeding women – and suggests that vaccination has benefits that extend to their babies as well.
For the study, published recently in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the researchers looked at how the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines affected 84 pregnant people, 31 people who were breastfeeding and 16 people who were not pregnant. Looking at pregnant participants, 13% received the first dose of the vaccine in the first trimester, 46% received it in the second, and 40% received it in the third trimester.
Researchers found that pregnant, breastfeeding and non-pregnant women had roughly the same levels of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in their blood after vaccination. The researchers also detected antibodies in the umbilical cord blood (of the 13 participants who gave birth during the study) and the breast milk of the participants, suggesting that the protection that a pregnant or breastfeeding person obtains from vaccine can be transferred to her child.
Pregnant women are at higher risk of complications, hospitalization and death from COVID-19, SELF previously reported. But because pregnant and breastfeeding women were excluded from clinical trials, which is actually standard practice in much of medicine, people in these groups didn’t have a lot of information on which to base their decision on whether or not to. to be vaccinated or not.
This study, although small, should help reassure these patients and their doctors that being pregnant or breastfeeding does not make you more likely to have side effects or complications after receiving these two COVID vaccines. 19. And larger studies are underway – in fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) v-safe program includes data on nearly 70,000 pregnant women vaccinated to date.
Of course, the decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy is an individual one, especially without solid clinical trial data. Experts therefore recommend that if you are pregnant or breastfeeding and are not sure whether to get the vaccine, you should talk to your doctor about what is right for you. But this new research can reassure anyone trying to make that choice right now.
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