HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL CON­SUL­TANT

You have wait­ed nine months for your new­born to ar­rive. You ate well, nav­i­gat­ed the anx­i­ety of be­ing preg­nant dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, took your pre­na­tal vi­t­a­mins, at­tend­ed ap­point­ments, and did your best to keep your­self safe and healthy. Now that your ba­by has ar­rived, how do you keep him or her healthy dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic?

You are con­cerned about the risks of vac­ci­na­tion as the “Pan­dem­ic of Mis­in­for­ma­tion” over­whelms all me­dia plat­forms. How do you de­ci­pher through the cloud of mis­in­for­ma­tion?

HEALTH PLUS did the re­search for you, and these are the FACTS.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) rec­om­mends that breast­feed­ing moth­ers be vac­ci­nat­ed. This is sup­port­ed by the Roy­al Col­lege of Ob­ste­tri­cians and Gy­nae­col­o­gists (RCOG) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Gy­nae­col­o­gy and Ob­stet­rics (FI­GO). In ad­di­tion, the CDC and the UK Joint Com­mit­tee on Vac­ci­na­tion and Im­mu­ni­sa­tion all is­sued sup­port­ing state­ments.

De­clared on the RCOG pol­i­cy doc­u­ment, up­dat­ed fre­quent­ly, as re­cent­ly as Ju­ly 19, 2021, the fol­low­ing ques­tions were an­swered.

Q. Can I have a COVID-19 vac­cine if I am breast­feed­ing?

COVID-19 vac­cines are rec­om­mend­ed to breast­feed­ing women. There is no plau­si­ble mech­a­nism by which any vac­cine in­gre­di­ent could pass to your ba­by through breast milk. You should there­fore not stop breast­feed­ing in or­der to be vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19.

Q. Is the Vac­cine passed on through breast milk?

For many new par­ents, a key con­cern around COVID-19 vac­cines is whether the vac­cine could be harm­ful to their breast­feed­ing child. The Sinopharm jab - does not con­tain any live virus. The good news is that there is no ev­i­dence that the COVID-19 vac­cine pass­es on any harm­ful sub­stances through breast milk.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a re­cent study by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, of­fers the first di­rect da­ta sup­port­ing vac­cine safe­ty dur­ing breast­feed­ing and could al­lay con­cerns among those who have de­clined vac­ci­na­tion or dis­con­tin­ued breast­feed­ing. The pa­per ap­pears in JA­MA Pe­di­atrics.

Q. Are there COVID-19 an­ti­bod­ies in breast milk fol­low­ing vac­ci­na­tion

There is one type of par­ti­cle that sci­en­tists are ea­ger to see in breast milk fol­low­ing a vac­cine: COVID-19 an­ti­bod­ies.

Dr Kathryn Gray, a ma­ter­nal–fe­tal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist at Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, and her col­leagues de­cid­ed to test how well the COVID-19 vac­cines work in this group. They re­cruit­ed 131 par­tic­i­pants who were about to re­ceive vac­ci­na­tion and who were lac­tat­ing, preg­nant or nei­ther, and found that the lac­tat­ing in­di­vid­u­als gen­er­at­ed the same ro­bust an­ti­body re­sponse as did those who were not lac­tat­ing. In oth­er words: the vac­cine is just as ben­e­fi­cial for breast­feed­ing mums.

Liq­uid gold

Re­searchers have long known that new­born ba­bies don’t ef­fec­tive­ly pro­duce an­ti­bod­ies against harm­ful bac­te­ria and virus­es; and it can take three to six months for this kind of pro­tec­tion to kick in. To help in those ear­ly days, a moth­er’s breast milk over­flows with an­ti­bod­ies ca­pa­ble of staving off po­ten­tial threats, in­clu­sive of SARS-CoV-2.

When Gray and her col­leagues checked the blood and the breast milk of lac­tat­ing moth­ers who had re­ceived a COVID-19 vac­cine, they found high lev­els of COVID-19 an­ti­bod­ies in every sam­ple.

“This process is so mag­i­cal,” says Dr Galit Al­ter, an im­mu­nol­o­gist and vi­rol­o­gist at Har­vard Med­ical School in Boston, who worked on Dr Gray’s study.

What hap­pens once an­ti­bod­ies reach the ba­by, how­ev­er, is just enig­mat­ic. An­ti­bod­ies in the breast milk do not make it in­to a ba­by’s blood­stream, but coat the mouth, throat and gut be­fore they’re ul­ti­mate­ly di­gest­ed. Nonethe­less, these an­ti­bod­ies seem to pro­vide pro­tec­tion. It could be that they work at the body’s en­trances to fend off in­fec­tion be­fore it takes root.

“It’s very nice af­ter this past year to have a tiny bit of good news,” says pae­di­atric im­mu­nol­o­gist Brid­get Young at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester Med­ical Cen­ter. And it’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­cit­ing find­ing giv­en that ba­bies are not cur­rent­ly el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive any of the avail­able vac­cines (al­though both Pfiz­er–BioN­Tech and Mod­er­na have start­ed tri­als of their COVID-19 vac­cines in chil­dren as young as six months).

Breast Milk is more than nu­tri­tion, it is med­i­cine

Though COVID-19 is of­ten mild in younger pop­u­la­tions, ba­bies less than two years of age who con­tract the dis­ease are hos­pi­tal­ized more of­ten than old­er chil­dren are. That’s be­cause the bron­chi­oles, the pas­sage­ways that de­liv­er air to the lungs, are much small­er in ba­bies. In ad­di­tion, ba­bies and chil­dren can al­so de­vel­op a se­vere ill­ness known as MIS-C (mul­ti­sys­tem in­flam­ma­to­ry syn­drome in chil­dren), in which dif­fer­ent parts of the body be­come in­flamed af­ter the child con­tracts COVID-19.

“This is why vac­ci­na­tion in lac­tat­ing moth­ers is so cru­cial. Breast­milk is a por­tal for an­ti­bod­ies to ba­bies. It’s specif­i­cal­ly de­signed by Moth­er Na­ture, to pro­vide the child with the child’s first vac­cine,” says Dr Kathryn Gray, ma­ter­nal–fe­tal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist “Breast milk by it­self is more than nu­tri­tion, breast milk is med­i­cine.”

More in­for­ma­tion can be found at :

https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/guide­lines-re­search-ser­vices/coro­n­avirus-covid-19-preg­nan­cy-and-wom­ens-health/covid-19-vac­cines-and-preg­nan­cy/covid-19-vac­cines-preg­nan­cy-and-breast­feed­ing/

https://www.fi­go.org/news/covid-19-vac­ci­na­tion-fi­go-re­leas­es-state­ment-and-hosts-we­bi­nar