When pregnant women get vaccines against COVID, their babies are born with ready-to-use anti-COVID antibodies, Israeli doctors have discovered.
A team at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem checked the umbilical cord blood of 40 newborns, which is the same blood as the baby, and found that everyone had a strong supply of antibodies – just like their mothers who were vaccinated with Pfizer- Photos from BioNTech.
Considered the largest study of its kind, the researchers believe the discovery justifies the health authorities’ appeal to pregnant women to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. And with the world constantly looking to Israel for new data on the impact of vaccines, the discovery is likely to have strong international resonance.
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“This is an important finding that is reassuring, suggesting that vaccinated mothers pass COVID-19 protection to their babies before they are born,” said Prof. Dana Wolf, head of Hadassah’s virology department, to The Times of Israel.
A healthcare professional administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine to a pregnant woman at a Clalit health facility in Tel Aviv on January 23, 2021 (AFP)
“This underscores the importance of vaccinating pregnant women and the benefits of doing so.”
The babies in the study were born to mothers of various ages, all of whom received their second vaccine at least a week earlier.
Wolf noted that initially health officials did not recommend that pregnant women receive the vaccine, but recently the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the Israeli Ministry of Health and others supported the immunization of pregnant women. She said her study offers additional justification for that decision.
Partial results of the survey – covering half the babies examined – were posted online in an initial version of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. The findings come in the wake of another Israeli study that suggests that vaccinated mothers pass antibodies to their newborns through breast milk.
Prof. Dana Wolf, head of the virology department at Hadassah Medical Center (courtesy of Hadassah)
“In our study, we found immunoglobulin G antibodies active against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which basically block the virus from entering cells. This follows research that suggests that excellent milk has another type of antibody, immunoglobulin A, ”said Wolf.
She said the research was not sure whether antibodies provide protection against infection, but she strongly believes that they will. She noted that there was no information on how long babies would retain their antibodies or any protection they could provide.
Wolf conducted his research with colleagues in Hadassah’s obstetrics and gynecology department, including Amihai Rottenstreich and Shay Potrat.
“Our methodology has been to accompany vaccinated women admitted for delivery from February and, if they agree, at the time of delivery we look at maternal blood and umbilical cord blood that is equal to the blood of the fetus.
“Looking at the blood, we found that the vaccinated women, all of whom received both injections in the third trimester, had very high levels of antibodies and, most importantly, that there is an efficient transfer of antibodies from the mother to the fetus through the placenta. .
“The discovery is that antibodies are effectively transmitted to newborns and we believe that this means that protection against the coronavirus is transmitted.”
