Einmalige Möglichkeit für doppelten Nutzen: Impfungen in der Schwangerschaft

ABSTRACT

Vaccinations are one of the greatest achievements for protecting public health. Vaccines given to pregnant women protect not only the pregnant woman, but also the newborn. Pregnant women are disproportionately strongly affected by infections. The conflicting demands on the maternal immune system during pregnancy geared toward maintaining fetal immune tolerance make a rapid and effective immune response against pathogens more difficult. This dynamic state of immune adaptation predisposes pregnant women to more severe disease progression. Vaccination can prevent infection or a serious course of disease. As a result, the risk of premature birth and other serious pregnancy complications that can have lifelong consequences for both mother and child also decreases. After birth, when the newborn must first develop an adaptive memory for a hitherto unknown, antigen-rich environment, it is particularly vulnerable to infections and resulting complications. The transfer of maternal antibodies across the placenta protects infants who are too young to be vaccinated. When breastfeeding, this continues through antibodies in breast milk. For the vaccinations recommended by the Standing Vaccination Committee (STIKO) during pregnancy (influenza, pertussis, coronavirus disease [COVID]-19), there is clear evidence from various observational and prospective studies that they protect mother and child either from infection or from a severe disease course. The following article gives an overview of the vaccination strategy for pregnancy and summarizes the scientific data on effectiveness of the vaccinations currently recommended during pregnancy.