Pregnant women make antibodies after vaccination and transfer them to babies Vaccines don’t damage placenta: Study

New Delhi, May 12: Covid-19 vaccines may be safe during pregnancy, suggests a study that found no evidence of injury to the placenta in pregnant women who received the preventive.

The first-of-its-kind study, published on Tuesday in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, adds to the growing literature that Covid-19 vaccines are safe in pregnancy.

“The placenta is like the black box in an airplane. If something goes wrong with a pregnancy, we usually see changes in the placenta that can help us figure out what happened,” said Jeffery Goldstein, assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the US.

“From what we can tell, the Covid vaccine does not damage the placenta,” Goldstein said.

The researchers noted that there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy, especially among pregnant people.

“Our team hopes these data, albeit preliminary, can reduce concerns about the risk of the vaccine to the pregnancy,” said study co-author Emily Miller, assistant professor at Northwestern University.

The study authors examined the placentas from 84 vaccinated patients and 116 unvaccinated patients who delivered at a hospital in Chicago, US.

Most patients received vaccines — either Moderna or Pfizer — during their third trimester.

Last year, the same team published a study that found placentas of women who tested positive for the Covid-19 virus while pregnant showed abnormal blood flow between mother and baby in utero.

Pregnant patients who want to get vaccinated to avoid contracting the disease should feel safe doing so, Miller said.

“We are beginning to move to a framework of protecting foetuses through vaccination, rather than from vaccination,” Miller said.

In April, the scientists published a study showing pregnant women make Covid antibodies after vaccination and successfully transfer them to their foetuses. “Until infants can get vaccinated, the only way for them to get Covid antibodies is from their mother,” Goldstein said.

The placenta is the first organ that forms during pregnancy. It performs duties for most of the foetus' organs while they are still forming, such as providing oxygen while the lungs develop and nutrition while the gut is forming. According to the researchers, the placenta manages hormones and the immune system, and tells the mother's body to welcome and nurture the foetus rather than reject it as a foreign intruder.

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