Flu vaccines in pregnancy protect newborns

Giving pregnant women the influenza vaccines will go some way to protect their infants from the virus, scientists have found.

According to a new collaborative study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and colleagues, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, babies born to mothers who received the vaccine while pregnant were 50 per cent less likely to be hospitalised by the virus, than those born to women who did not have the injection.

Katherine A Poehling, associate professor of paediatrics and lead author on the study, said that children under the age of six months have the highest rates of hospitalisation as a result of the flu, but the vaccine is not effective in infants so young.

"We know that mothers pass antibodies through the placenta to the baby. This study showed us that receiving the influenza vaccine during pregnancy not only protects the mother, but also protects the baby in the early months of life," she explained.

The scientists found that children born from mothers who had received that vaccine while pregnant were 45 to 48 per cent less likely to need hospital treatment for clinically confirmed flu.