MONDAY, Aug. 15, 2022 (HealthDay News) — The most popular vaccines against COVID-19 are safe for use during pregnancy, a major new Canadian study concludes.
About 4% of pregnant women given an mRNA vaccine had a significant health event within a week of their first dose, and about 7% did so after a second dose, according to data collected from more than 191,000 Canadian women.
In comparison, 3% of unvaccinated pregnant women reported similar significant health events, defined as an illness that caused the person to miss work or school, required medical consultation, or prevented them from participating in regular daily activities.
The most common significant health events after the second dose in pregnant women were malaise, headache or migraine, and respiratory tract infection.
Among a control group of vaccinated but nonpregnant people, about 6 percent reported a health event after the first dose and 11 percent after the second, according to the report, published online Aug. 11 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The study, led by Manish Sadarangani of the Vaccine Evaluation Center at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Vancouver, is one of the first to compare vaccine side effects between vaccinated pregnant women, unvaccinated pregnant women and a third group that was vaccinated but not pregnant.
Serious health events—defined as requiring an emergency department visit or hospitalization—were rare in all groups (less than 1%).
Miscarriage or stillbirth was the most commonly reported adverse pregnancy outcome, but there was no significant difference between the rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated women, the study authors reported in a journal release.
About 2% of unvaccinated pregnant women and 1.5% of vaccinated pregnant women had a miscarriage or stillbirth within seven days of the first dose of either mRNA vaccine.
The findings “concur with and add to the growing body of evidence that mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are safe during pregnancy,” according to a commentary accompanying the new study.
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SOURCE: The Lancet Infectious Diseases, news release, August 11, 2022.
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