LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Pregnant women who get flu shots will
have bigger and healthier babies, studies show.
Flu shot in pregnancy will also help prevent preterm births and reduce rates of
hospitalization for newborns, according to the studies presented at this week's
annual meeting of the Infectious Disease Society of America in Philadelphia.
In flu pandemics, pregnant women were at risk for giving birth prematurely to
underweight babies, the studies warned.
In one study, researchers at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health
analyzed data on 6,410 births in Georgia and found that the risks of premature
delivery and having a low birth-weight infant were significantly reduced among
the 15 percent of women who received a flu shot during pregnancy.
During the height of the flu season premature births among vaccinated women fell
70 percent, compared with unvaccinated women, said Dr. Saad B. Omer, an
assistant professor of global health and epidemiology at the school.
And the likelihood of having a small baby was reduced 70 percent, Omer said in a
news release.
In
another study, Yale University School of Medicine researchers found that the
mother's flu shot during pregnancy was 78.9 percent effective in preventing her
non-vaccinated infant from being hospitalized during the first year of life and
85.3 percent effective in preventing hospitalization from infancy to 6 months.
Women who were vaccinated were 30 percent less likely to develop respiratory
illness with fever, and those women had substantially heavier infants than
unvaccinated women, said researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical
Center.
Flu among infants whose mothers were vaccinated was reduced 63percent, according
to the researchers who looked at the relationship between flu shots and birth
weight in Bangladesh.
In yet another study of pregnant women in Bangladesh, Emily Henkle, from the
Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
wanted to determine the rate of flu infection in their infants.
Henkle found high rates of flu among infants younger than 6 months whose mothers
had not been vaccinated.
Despite the benefits of seasonal flu vaccine, the rate of vaccination among
pregnant women is "dismal" because only about 25 percent of American pregnant
women are getting vaccinated, according to figures released at the
just-concluded meeting.
Source : Xinhua News Agency
