For nursing mothers, coronavirus vaccine 'could protect baby'

Breastfeeding

This is thought to be the first study to track specific levels of these antibodies in breast milk over an extended time period.

Photo credit: Fotosearch

What you need to know:

  • Covid-19 infection is more severe during pregnancy.
  • Expert says there have now been almost 70,000 pregnant women vaccinated with no evidence of harm.

Scientists say they have observed a major boost in Covid-19 antibodies in breast milk after vaccination.

This suggests the shot could indeed offer real benefits for both mother and child.

According to a study by the Washington University School of Medicine, nursing mothers who receive a Covid-19 vaccine were believed to be passing protective antibodies to their babies through breast milk for at least 80 days following vaccination.

“Our study showed a huge boost in antibodies against the Covid-19 virus in breast milk starting two weeks after the first shot, and this response was sustained for the course of our study, which was almost three months long,” said lead author and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the university, Jeannie Kelly.

Based on the small study, involving five mothers who provided frozen breast milk samples after receiving the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, the research provides some of the first peer-reviewed evidence that breastfeeding confers a long-lasting immune response in the nursing infants and toddlers of vaccinated mothers.

Misleading posts

“There is so much vaccine misinformation out there right now, some of it really scary, misleading posts on social media that are designed to scare moms, so we felt like we needed to look at the science,” said Kelly in the study published last month in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

While other recent research has shown that Covid-19 vaccines generate antibodies that are passed on to nursing infants through breast milk, this is thought to be the first study to track specific levels of these antibodies in breast milk over an extended time period.

“We do know that Covid-19 infection is more severe during pregnancy and the main benefit of vaccination is to provide protection for moms before they become really sick, which can also be dangerous to their foetus,” Kelly said. “There have now been almost 70,000 pregnant people vaccinated with no evidence of harm.”