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 The bacterium Bordetella pertussis causes whooping cough, which gets
its nickname from the sounds patients make as they gasp for air
during intense coughing fits. Pertussis is highly contagious and
easily spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes. About half
of babies under age 1 year who catch pertussis require
hospitalization for serious complications like pneumonia or brain
disorders.
About 49 percent of pregnant women in the U.S. got the Tdap booster
vaccine against tetnanus, diphtheria and pertussis last year, up
from just 27 percent in 2014, the study from the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found. The CDC first
recommended this vaccine for all pregnant women in 2013.
“While we are encouraged to see Tdap vaccination is becoming a
routine part of prenatal care, one out of two babies are born
without protection from whooping cough,” said Carla Black, a
researcher with the CDC’s Immunization Services Division who worked
on the study.
“The best way to protect babies from whooping cough is to get a Tdap
vaccine during the third trimester of each pregnancy,” Black said by
email. “Getting Tdap vaccination while pregnant helps protect babies
during the critical time between birth and 2 months old, the age
when they are old enough to begin getting their own whooping cough
vaccines.”
Women were most likely to get the Tdap vaccine when a doctor or
nurse recommended it and offered to give them the shot, the study
found. About 70 percent of women got vaccinated under these
circumstances, compared with just 1.4 percent of women who were not
told to do this by their health care provider.
When providers told patients to get the vaccine but didn’t give it
to them, about 31 percent of the women were vaccinated, the study
also found.
Roughly 13 percent of women who didn’t get the vaccine said they
were concerned that it was unsafe for their baby, and another 5
percent of women were worried the vaccine might be unsafe for them.
“From a safety perspective, there’s good data that tells us it’s
safe for both mother and baby, with the majority of reported side
effects being a sore arm after the vaccine,” said Dr. Kerrie Wiley,
a public health researcher at The University of Sydney in Australia
who wasn’t involved in the study.
The study confirms something doctors have long known about vaccines:
that patients are much more likely to get their recommended shots
when doctors tell them to do it and then have a dose ready to give
them, Wiley said by email.
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“Pregnancy is such a busy time, there’s so many things expectant
mothers need to remember, and many women in our research spoke about
information overload - having to remember appointments, which foods
to avoid and all those other recommendations that come with finding
out they’re pregnant,” Wiley said. “It’s about helping put
recommended vaccines on their pregnancy radar.
Until recently, there was still some concern that the Tdap
vaccination wouldn’t provide sufficient protection for babies, noted
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at
Stanford University School of Medicine in California.
“Recent studies have demonstrated that there is good protection
against pertussis among young infants by maternal Tdap,” Maldonado,
who wasn’t involved in the CDC study, said by email.
“Better education of pregnant women and their providers would be
very helpful in increasing maternal Tdap vaccination,” Maldonado
added.
To assess vaccination rates, researchers conducted an online survey
in March and April of 2016 of women 18 to 49 years old who were
pregnant at any time since August 1, 2015. The survey included about
2,100 women. Researchers followed similar methods to collect data on
vaccination rates for 2014 and 2015.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2sffcwW Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, online June 1, 2017.
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