When pregnant women receive COVID vaccines, their babies are born with ready-made antibodies against COVID, Israeli doctors have found.
A team from the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem checked blood from the umbilical cords of 40 newborns, which is the same as the baby’s blood, and found that all had a strong amount of antibodies – just like their mothers who were vaccinated with the Pfizer is. BioNTech shots.
The researchers believe that this is the largest study of its kind and that the finding confirms the call of health officials to pregnant women to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. And while the world is constantly looking to Israel for new data on the impact of vaccines, the finding is likely to have a strong international resonance.
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“This is a reassuringly important finding, which suggests that vaccinated mothers give COVID-19 protection to their babies before they are born,” said prof. Dana Wolf, head of Hadassah’s virology division, told The Times of Israel.
A health worker gives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine to a pregnant woman at a Clalit Health Services facility in Tel Aviv (AFP) on January 23, 2021
“It underscores the importance of vaccinating pregnant women, and its benefits.”
The babies in the study were born to mothers spanning a variety of ages, who all received their second vaccine shot at least a week in advance.
Wolf noted that health authorities initially did not recommend that pregnant women receive the vaccine, but recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the Israeli Ministry of Health and others have provided support for the immunization of pregnant women. She said her study provides further justification for this decision.
Partial results of the research – which covers half of the infants surveyed – were published online in an early version of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. The findings come on the heels of another Israeli study suggesting that vaccinated mothers pass on antibodies to their newborns through breast milk.
Prof. Dana Wolf, Head of the Virology Division at Hadassah Medical Center (thanks to Hadassah)
“In our study, we found immunoglobulin G antibodies that are active against the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which basically block the access of the virus to cells. This follows research that indicates that large milk contains another type of antibody, Immunoglobulin A, ”Wolf said.
She said the research did not establish with certainty that the antibodies provided protection against infection, but she did believe so. There is, according to her, no information on how long the babies will keep their antibodies or any protection they offer.
Wolf conducted her research with colleagues from Hadassah’s Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology, including Amihai Rottenstreich and Shay Potrat.
‘Our methodology was to follow the vaccinated women who had been admitted for delivery since February, and if they agreed, we would look at the delivery to maternal blood and umbilical cord blood which is the same as the blood of the fetus.
“From the blood test we found that vaccinated women, who both received both shots in the third trimester, had very high antibody levels, and more importantly that the antibodies are efficiently transmitted from the mother to the fetus via the placenta.
“The finding is that the antibodies are effectively transmitted to newborns, and we believe this means that the protection against the coronavirus is transmitted.”
