We know that the flu vaccine is safe during pregnancy and that the World Health Organization (WHO), the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) and the Ministry of Health, recommend influenza vaccination in any trimester of pregnancy.
Now, the Cyber of Epidemiology and Public Health (Ciberesp) of the National Epidemiology Center of the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid further supports the need to immunize mothers, at the conclusion of one of their studies that: "The risk of hospitalization with severe influenza infection increases eight times with pregnancy".
The conclusions of the study
Ciberesp's research, published in the journal Plos One, has assessed the risk of complications from influenza among pregnant and non-pregnant women of reproductive age. The results suggest that the vaccine could reduce the risk of admission to the ICU or fatal evolution in pregnant women who are hospitalized with influenza infection.
The researchers of this work, Clara Mazagatos and Amparo Larrauri, used information from the surveillance system of confirmed serious hospitalized cases of influenza in Spain, which is part of the Influenza Surveillance System in Spain (SVGE), since the 2010-11 season until 2015-16.
The importance of the vaccine in pregnancy
The study authors also found that of the 167 pregnant women included in their research, only five (3.6%) had received the flu vaccine. This low coverage contrasts with the official vaccination recommendations, which consider pregnant women as a risk group for contracting the infection.
In fact, a pregnant woman has an 18 percent higher risk of complications than a woman who is not, because of the changes that occur in her body during pregnancy. This makes them more likely to develop a serious illness such as pneumonia, bronchitis and other lung diseases. The risk is even greater if the mother suffers from asthma or diabetes or if she is going to give birth in the winter months.
The vaccine reduces flu cases by 70% in pregnant women. So…
Why don't future moms get immunized?
The Ministry of Health fully explains what the flu is, how it is spread and treated, why it is important to get vaccinated every year and where to go to get it. He recommends receiving the flu vaccine in the months of October and November, when the virus begins to circulate, although he clarifies that the pregnant woman can be vaccinated even in January and later, because it is still beneficial.
Not only this official body reaffirms the safety of the flu vaccine in pregnant women. A recent study showed that this immunization, and that of pertussis, are safe for the baby.
Precisely, one of the authors of the research, Dr. Lakshmi Sukumaran, mentioned in Reuters that this study was done mainly because many pregnant women had doubts about what could happen to their babies when they were exposed to vaccines during pregnancy:
"We wanted to reaffirm that these vaccines, which are recommended during pregnancy, do not pose any risk to the baby."
Therefore, it is also ruled out the fear of some parents before the unjustified beliefs, which circulated a while ago, that associated the vaccine with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children. This denial of the idea was further reinforced by researchers from the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland (USA). His study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, concluded:
"Our results show the absence of an association between the risk of ASD and influenza infection during pregnancy or vaccination against influenza during the second or third trimester of pregnancy."
So, once again, we want to highlight from here the importance of immunizing against the flu during pregnancy to protect the baby. Getting an infection can also cause you to be born prematurely. In addition, being vaccinated during pregnancy reduces the number of hospitalizations due to infection in babies under 6 months by 80%. So why take the risk?
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