Do pregnant and lactating women need to be vaccinated? When do you know more about your child?

When the first coronavirus vaccine received an emergency use authorization in early December, the advice for pregnant and lactating women was: You can choose to be vaccinated. Your healthcare professional can help you make a decision.

Clinical trials of two coronavirus vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration have shown that the vaccine is effective in most adults 16 years and older (Pfizer), And over 18 years old (modern).The doses in those groups Already administered Around Wisconsin.

But experts warn that the vaccine has been developed so rapidly that public health professionals, and the general public, do not yet have time to answer all the questions they have about the vaccine.

Example: Yes There is not enough evidence yet To determine if a person vaccinated with the coronavirus can still spread the virus to others, healthcare providers continue to take basic precautions such as wearing masks, social distance, and hand washing. We encourage everyone to do so.

Another question for which we don’t have enough data yet is how safe and effective the vaccine is for pregnant and lactating women and children. Dr. William Hartman of UW Health said the lack of data does not mean that researchers believe the vaccine is unsafe for these groups.

Hartman is the lead investigator in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial at UW Health, answering a series of questions about what we are doing and what we don’t know about these groups of vaccines. It was.

Pregnant woman

So far, none of the coronavirus vaccine clinical trials have allowed pregnant women to participate.It’s beautiful General For clinical trials — Researchers find it easier if the trial does not require consideration of both pregnant and fetal health.

As a result, Hartman said, “Currently, there are no data on COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant women.”

Nonetheless, the FDA’s emergency permit for vaccines does not exclude pregnant women and keeps the door open for vaccination. According to Hartman, some pregnant women in the group recommended to be vaccinated (such as health care workers) may decide to get the injection.

Hartman said pregnant women need to consider their personal circumstances with their doctors and loved ones. “Are you doing a dangerous job? Is the risk of getting a virus greater than the potential risk of getting a vaccine?”

He said there are many precedents for pregnant women who are safely vaccinated, such as flu shots.

Breastfeeding and lactating women

Lactating women, as well as pregnant women, were excluded from the vaccine trial. The drawn anger From the Maternal Fetal Medicine Society. However, like pregnant women, breastfeeding women who belong to groups currently recommended to be vaccinated may choose to do so.

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The· CDC note With the exception of smallpox and yellow fever vaccines, “neither inactivated vaccines nor live virus vaccines given to lactating women affect the safety of breastfeeding women and their infants.”

Traditional vaccines fall into these “inactivated” and “live virus” categories. That is, it relies on an attenuated or inactivated version of the bacterium to provoke an immune response in the body.

The vaccine developed by Pfizer and Moderna uses a completely different technique called mRNA, which is completely virus-free.

“It’s like giving cells a note that they can produce proteins,” Hartman explained. “Then the protein can go to the cell surface and produce antibodies.”

mRNA is not believed to pose a risk to breastfeeding babies fired by the mother. In fact, Hartmann said the antibodies produced by the vaccine could invade the mother’s milk and immunize the baby.

Hartman said he knows at least one study examining COVID-19 antibody levels in breast milk and will soon be known on this topic.

Children

For children, Hartman said researchers need to ensure that the vaccine is safe for children under the age of 18 before making recommendations for that age group. He said that because children may react differently to the vaccine than adults do.

“Children can react differently to different vaccines, and children can react more seriously than adults develop,” Hartman said. “So we need to make sure that the profile looks good and looks safe so that the children can get it.”

The good news, according to Hartman, is that the answers to these questions may be right there.

According to Hartman, children are lower on the study priority list because they tend to be less ill with the coronavirus.

“Therefore, when these vaccines were established, the priority was on adults, especially the elderly,” Hartman said.

However, studies on pregnant women and toddlers Likely to start In January, much more could be known before the vaccine becomes widely available to the public.