Covid-19 has caused an alarming increase in the number of premature babies. When the vaccine was just available, pregnant women were still afraid that the shot would have a negative effect on their unborn child. But the opposite turns out to be true.
Scientists at Stanford have used data from almost 40 million people in California to show that the corona vaccines have saved many more children’s lives than previously calculated. “The effect of a corona infection in a pregnant woman is significant. This is reflected in our data from the start of the pandemic in 2020 until well into 2023. The risk of a premature baby has been about 1.2 percent greater over the past three years than in the period before the pandemic,” says sociology professor Jenna Nobles from Wisconsin. “Such a much greater risk of premature birth can be compared to intense exposure to environmental factors, such as inhaling the smoke clouds of a forest fire for weeks during pregnancy.”
Destruction of the placenta
But the first two years of the pandemic were much worse in terms of the risk of complications during pregnancy, the study shows. The coronavirus causes immune and inflammatory responses in the body of pregnant women, and the breakdown of the placenta. A consequence of this was that the pregnancy sometimes ended well before the normal 39 to 40 weeks. When the virus was circulating from July to November 2020, a California mother was more than 5.4 percent more likely to give birth more than three weeks before her due date, at 12.3 percent instead of 6.9 percent of the cases.
The success of the vaccines
As mentioned, the researchers analyzed the data of almost 40 million births. Not only the duration of pregnancy, but also the dates of birth of brothers or sisters were taken into account to find out the effects of the pandemic. For example, they discovered that the harmful effect decreased slightly at the beginning of 2021 and only decreased sharply in 2022. Afterwards, it turned out that a corona infection in the mother no longer caused any additional risk of premature birth. According to the scientists, this is largely due to the vaccines.
This effect is particularly visible if you look at the data per postal code area. “In postcode areas with the highest vaccination rate, the additional risk fell much faster. Since the summer of 2021, a corona infection during pregnancy no longer had any effect on the risk of premature birth. It took almost a year longer for this effect to also occur in the postcode areas with the lowest vaccination rate,” Nobles explains. “This shows how protective the vaccines have been. By rapidly increasing immunity, thousands of premature births have been prevented.”
Major consequences of premature birth
You may think it’s not a big deal if a baby is born prematurely, but it comes with all kinds of potential health problems, both short and long term. It is the largest cause of infant mortality and the additional medical costs per child are on average more than 73,000 euros. “We found approximately the same increased percentages, about 38 percent higher, at the risk of very preterm infants (earlier than 32 weeks). These babies often require intensive treatment and are at risk of developing developmental disorders and associated serious consequences for the entire family,” says Nobles.
“A major reason for doubt among expectant mothers about the vaccine is that they fear for their fertility and the safety of the fetus. We already know that there is little to no evidence for adverse effects of vaccination on the development of the unborn child. These new results are strong evidence that not vaccinating is harmful to the fetus. That’s a message health care providers can convey to concerned women.”
Boosters are needed
The study results clearly show how important it is to take the corona vaccine, according to the researchers, even as corona-related risks of premature birth have faded in California. “We are still in the midst of an evolving epidemic, with only a small percentage of pregnant women receiving a booster,” Nobles said. “The question is how long it will take for the virus to mutate in such a way that it escapes the immunity we have built up. It is great that we have managed to reduce the risk of premature births to pre-corona levels, but that does not mean that this will always remain the case.”
2023-11-28 07:32:17
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