Covid jabs safe in pregnancy, finds 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 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 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.