JAMA: Covid-19 vaccine does not lead to increased risk of pregnancy complications

Vaccination against COVID-19 during pregnancy did not lead to pregnancy complications, according to a large registry study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

The study included nearly 160,000 pregnant women

Co-first author Dr Anne Örtqvist Rosin, Karolinska Institutet: "The findings are reassuring and hopefully make pregnant women more willing to be vaccinated,"

Earlier studies have shown that pregnant women, who are at risk for severe COVID-19 requiring intensive care, have a higher risk of death than nulliparous women of reproductive age

Dr Örtqvist Rosin explained: “We found that vaccination rates (in pregnant women) are still lower than in other populations, so there are likely to be concerns about the effects of vaccines on pregnant women and their fetuses

The researchers then linked Sweden's pregnancy register and Norway's medical birth register with each country's vaccination register to obtain data on whether and when pregnant women were vaccinated, and which vaccine they received

In total, the study included 157,521 pregnant women (103,409 in Sweden and 54,112 in Norway)

According to current recommendations, most pregnant women in the study were vaccinated after 12 weeks

They believe that a potential advantage of being vaccinated during pregnancy is that the resulting antibodies may provide a degree of protection to the newborn through the placenta, helping to prevent COVID-19

Senior author Professor Olof Stephansson of Karolinska Institutet said: "We now plan to investigate how long this protection lasts and whether infection with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy or vaccination has any other lasting effects on the child's health.

Original text retrieval

Association of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination During Pregnancy With Pregnancy Outcomes

JAMA.