Vaccines and Pregnancy: As little as possible, but as necessary

In today's blog will address maternal vaccination against various infectious agents during pregnancy. No doubt this chapter deserves special consideration, based on three particular features of pregnancy in relation to infection and immunization:

 1. Pregnancy is a physiological state of immunosuppression can do to women (and therefore also the fetus) more vulnerable to the action of certain microorganisms.

 2. Infections during pregnancy are a major cause of illness, sequelae, and maternal and perinatal mortality . This has led to a large degree of consensus among the scientific and health when considering the prevention of infections through vaccination as an option is clearly preferable to treatment of established disease.

 3. However, the application of preventive measures is not safe . So often there is the duality between vaccinated or not, that is, between taking risk-taking attitudes controlled intervention but unavoidable to prevent the occurrence of an infection or not to assume these risks by relying on the unlikelihood that the mother suffers from a particular infection, but assuming a greater severity of the disease in case of. From this perspective there appears to be some agreement that pregnant women should get as little as possible , but as much as needed.

Moreover, not all vaccines are equal . Some are composed of living germs as those that produce natural infection, capable of infecting virtually vaccinated subject, while others contain only fragments of microorganisms or toxins against which it is intended to immunize. They are unable to produce or infection. The decision to vaccinate or not a pregnant woman will therefore depend not only maternal and fetal risk, but other factors such as the vaccine itself, experience of use in pregnant or epidemiological circumstances of the medium in which is the pregnant.