TUESDAY, Feb. 13, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Vaccination of pregnant individuals with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is not associated with increased risks for neonatal adverse events, according to a study published online in the Feb. 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Mikael Norman, M.D., Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues examined associations between exposure to mRNA COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy and adverse events in newborn infants. The analysis included 94,303 infants in Sweden and Norway who were exposed to COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy and 102,167 control infants (born June 2021 to January 2023).
The researchers found that exposed infants did not have increased odds of adverse neonatal outcomes, and they exhibited lower odds for neonatal nontraumatic intracranial hemorrhage (event rate, 1.7 versus 3.2 per 1,000; adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.78), hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (1.8 versus 2.7 per 1,000; aOR, 0.73), and neonatal mortality (0.9 versus 1.8 per 1,000; aOR, 0.68). Similar associations were seen for term infants, singleton births, or infants without birth defects. No differences were seen by vaccine manufacturer.
“The current study’s results could not elucidate the mechanisms that explain why infants of vaccinated individuals had lower risks of some outcomes including mortality,” the authors write. “Unmeasured confounding due to vaccinated individuals being healthier may have contributed to the lower neonatal morbidity and mortality associated with COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy.”
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