Pregnant women can pass Covid antibodies to newborns

The pandemic has been a horrible time to be a pregnant person for about a million different reasons, but the most important of them has to be the little information available on how covid interacts with pregnancy.

It wasn’t until November that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were able to conclude that pregnant women were more likely to suffer from serious complications virus. The finding contradicts the results of an earlier study, forcing the CDC to add pregnancy to its list of conditions that can worsen the effects of covid about eight months after the onset of the pandemic. And when the vaccine began to be available in December, health officials said that while there was no reason to believe there were specific risks to pregnant women, there were “very little data»To assess the final safety of the vaccine for the group. Pregnant women were advised to consult their doctor.

A recent discovery, however, might actually help:ts that people who contract covid during pregnancy may transmit antibodies to their newborns, giving them natural immunity.

The last assurance comes of a study published in JAMA Pediatrics, which also suggests that pregnant women transfer more antibodies to their fetuses if they contract the virus earlier in their pregnancy. The study found that the specific type of antibodies detected in fetuses were immunoglobulin G antibodies, the type that provides longer-term immunity to the virus, scientists said.

Scott E. Hensley, one of the study’s authors, said that while there is still research on how the vaccine affects pregnant women (as we know), the results suggest it may be beneficial to vaccinate people earlier in pregnancy to maximize immunity. for the fetus.

Some factors still require further investigation. According to the New York Times, researchers are unsure whether the antibodies are enough to prevent newborns from contracting covid, and they are not sure whether premature babies get the same benefits as those brought to term. Still, it seems that this finding at least gives pregnant women and their health care providers some practical advice on the benefits of the vaccine and when to get it.

Above all, it draws attention to the importance of continuing to learn more. Pregnant women have been excluded from early vaccine trials, and their inclusion may help highlight all of these nebulous findings.

“It is plausible that the Covid vaccine offers protection to both pregnant women and their infants,” said Mark Turrentine, member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology obstetrics covid-19 expert working group. . Times. “For me, this study highlights that the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials such as the covid-19 vaccine is essential, especially when the benefit of vaccination outweighs the potential risk of a potentially fatal disease.”