TimesOnline has just published an article on the NEW swine flu vaccine - and recommends that pregnant women ask for this in addition to last year's if they had it.

[JosephineClaire]

Has anyone else heard this?

I had a swine flu vaccine at about 10 weeks - I'm now wondering if I need another at 34 weeks...

"Influenza is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality in pregnant women and
neonates"

I would really want to see evidence of this to be honest.

They don't seem to provide a source

Duelingfanjo - it's a medical paper they have to quote sources. In the case of this quote they've put 11 and 12 afterwards if you then go to the bottom of the page you'll see the name of the resercher and paper to which the conclusion came from.

DuelingFanjo,

Why are you so sceptical?

You have heard of one woman on this thread who lost her baby and had a bp of 60/30 and a blood oxygenation of 50% due to SF. My wife had a viral infection a month ago which, while my son and I were ill with it, she was in hospital for a night and day and laid low for a week.

It is well known that flu is a serious illness and that women are immunosuppressed when pregnant.

It just seems to me that this is an attempt to be helpful and not some dark plot against womankind. I would happily have the jab tomorrow in order that I not infect my newborn (due November). I might even try to get it privately if not offered.

It is obviously a personal thing and everyone has to make their own minds up but it seems to me strange to not take a tiny risk to avoid a much larger one.

Jobopip. I am so sorry I did not see your post earlier. What a terrible suffering for you to endure.

Laryn you have no idea what the risk is. No one does.

A I sceptical?

I don't feel like the case for any super-flu/bird-flu/swine-flue vaccination for pregnant women in particular has been that convincing.

I know that one Mumsnetter had a very bad experience which may have been because of Swine Flu which is tragic but one cannot base a case on one or two case-studies (I do hope you daon't mind me calling it a case-study - am struggling for the right word) and my main objection is to the way that women are made to feel guilty for choosing not to have the vaccine, whatever their reasons.

Laryn you have no idea what the risk is. No one does.

Dylthan. Ah - I had read the abstract and missed the bit further down

the two sources are

Munoz FM. Influenza virus infection in infancy and early childhood. Paediatr
Respir Rev 2003;4:99?104.

and

Yusuf K, Soraisham AS, Fonseca K. Fatal influenza B virus pneumonia in
a preterm neonate: case report and revi
ew of the literature. J Perinatol
2007;27:623?5.

I will seek out the second one if possible.

here

As far as I can see from the little I have found tehy are looking at one case themselves and another case studied by someone else, plus several other cases where there were no fatalities. they also say "The prevalence of influenza B in neonates is unknown"

I can't claim to have read it all but will do later.

They also say "The father had upper respiratory symptoms and could have been the source of infection"

is the influenza vaccine safe this is based on an estimated 2 million pregnant women who had the vaccine between 2000 and 2003

Dueling,

No one should be made to feel guilty for the sincere decisions they take.

However, I am not sure the fact they are not offering it to fathers should be an argument against the mother being vaccinated. The main risk it to the mother, not the baby.

It's the word 'Substantial' in the phrase "substantial morbidity and mortality in pregnant women and neonates" which I think needs to be qualified.

I am not trying to convince anyone to NOT have the jabs, it's entirely up to them.

"The main risk it to the mother, not the baby." how many pregnant women who have not had the Vaccine(s) have died from Swine Flue/Flu etc in recent years?

Dueling,

That is the best I could find, from the CDC. They are about as respected as you can get.

Death is quite extreme but even hospitalisation is unpleasant when you are heavily pregnant.

Effects of Influenza on Pregnant Women

Pregnancy has been a risk factor for increased illness and death for both pandemic and seasonal influenza. The increased risk is believed to be related to several physiologic changes that occur during pregnancy. Because of mechanical and hormonal alterations that occur during pregnancy, several changes also occur to the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, including increased heart rate, stroke volume, oxygen consumption, and decreased lung capacity (13). Relevant immunologic alterations also occur during pregnancy, with a shift away from cell-mediated immunity toward humoral immunity. This shift can render pregnant women more susceptible to, or more severely affected by, certain viral pathogens, including influenza (14).

Although appropriate nonpregnant control groups were generally not available, mortality rates among pregnant women in the pandemics of 1918 and 1957 appeared to be abnormally high (5,7). Among 1,350 reported cases of influenza among pregnant women during the pandemic of 1918, the proportion of deaths was reported to be 27% (5). Similarly, among a small case series of 86 pregnant women hospitalized in Chicago for influenza in 1918, 45% died (6). Among pregnancy-associated deaths in Minnesota during the 1957 pandemic, influenza was the leading cause of death, accounting for nearly 20% of deaths associated with pregnancy during the pandemic period; half of women of reproductive age who died were pregnant (7).

Pregnant women have also been shown to be at increased risk for influenza complications during interpandemic periods (15). In a large study of >4,300 women of reproductive age during 19 interpandemic influenza seasons, pregnant women were compared with postpartum women (a group considered to be most similar to pregnant women demographically and with regard to their health) and were found to be significantly more likely to be hospitalized for a cardiopulmonary event during the influenza season (4). The risk for hospitalization increased as pregnancy progressed, with women at term nearly 5 times more likely to be hospitalized than postpartum women (4). Similarly, during 3 influenza seasons in the late 1970s, rates of medical visits for acute respiratory disease were more than twice as high among pregnant women than nonpregnant women (16). At particularly high risk during the influenza season are pregnant women with underlying medical conditions for which influenza vaccination is recommended, such as asthma (17). On the basis of these data, pregnant women should be considered a population for which special considerations for prevention and treatment for influenza need to be made.

Dueling- you asked if the vaccine would protect your newborn and that paper proved that it would.

I have asthma and get chest infections following a bad cold. I have had the generic flu jab for my years and did so whilst pregnant with DS.

Hello, in Scotland and had my SF jab at my 12 week scan appt the other week

For those of you who had SF - why was it so much worse than normal flu? Was it worse? I have had bad flu four times in my life, and I am asthmatic. I have willingly gone to get the flu shot on the basis I am in the 'at risk' group, and all five times I have had the jab I have been ill with a high temp and flu/ chest infection symptoms within 24hrs. For a week. Of course, when I have mentioned this to any doctor, I am told this is complete coincidence, couldn't possibly be the jab. That is utter bollocks. I have stopped having flu shots now - I'll take my luck with nature thanks. I know soooo many friends and colleagues that have a similar reaction, and they are also told it is coincidence.
I'm too scared by the unknown effects of the swine flu jab. I don't trust the drugs companies to have undertaken adequate research.
When I asked my doctor why polio vaccinations are no longer drops given on sugar cubes, I was alarmed at the answer.
I chose not to have the SF vaccine when I was pregnant, and am glad I didn't. If my daughter had had any health problems, I would never have been able to be comfortable about whether something in the jab had caused the problem or not. I know other people feel differently.

"The number of reported cases of autism increased dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s. This increase is largely attributable to changes in diagnostic practices" -- according to who? wikipedia?

"it is not known how much, if any, growth came from real changes in autism's prevalence" -- well quite

"no causal connection to the MMR vaccine has been demonstrated" there is evidence of a causal connection the research Wakefield recommended was not carried out so no causal connection was going to be found if the research was non existent -- epidemiological studies were wholly relied upon in government attempts to "reassure"

In October 2004, a meta review, financed by the European Union, was published in the October 2004 edition of Vaccine[101] that assessed the evidence given in 120 other studies and considered unintended effects of the MMR vaccine. The authors concluded that although the vaccine is associated with positive and negative side effects, a connection between MMR and autism was unlikely" link please. It's entirely possible "unlikely" is wishful thinking.

"In February 2005, a study compared autism in Japan before and after the 1993 withdrawal of the MMR vaccine: the autism rates continued to increase, which means that the withdrawal of MMR on other countries is unlikely to cause a reduction in future autism cases." Anyone who still relies on the Japan study is well out of date. The three jabs were often given in the same day or only a week apart. Wakefield said it was the proximity of the immune challenge which might be seen to cause an issue. The Japan study does nothing to undermine him.

In October 2005, the Cochrane Library published a review of 31 scientific studies, which found no "credible" whose word is that? evidence of an involvement of MMR with either autism or Crohn's disease...the authors of the report also stated that "the design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate." basically the studies were inadequate, nobody knows but hell, it's all over the world so that must be ok then.

"A 2007 case study used the figure in Wakefield's 1999 letter to The Lancet alleging a temporal association between MMR vaccination and autism[102] to illustrate how a graph can misrepresent its data, and gave advice to authors and publishers to avoid similar misrepresentations in the future." -- Wakefield's work has been misrepresented both deliberately and by people like you who've picked up on the lies and run with them

"a 2007 review of independent studies performed after the publication of Wakefield et al.'s original report found that these studies provide compelling evidence against the hypothesis that MMR is associated with autism." -- authors, refs to studies please: Wakefield and the parents of the twelve repeatedly offered to allow research on "the twelve" but this was ignored

"A review of the work conducted in 2004 for UK court proceedings but not revealed until 2007 found that the polymerase chain reaction analysis essential to the Wakefield et al. results was fatally flawed due to contamination, and that it could not have possibly detected the measles that it was supposed to have detected." -- moot

"A 2009 review of studies on links between vaccines and autism discusses the MMR vaccine controversy as one of three main hypotheses which epidemiological and biological studies fail to support." -- which biological studies? epidemiological studies are of no value at all when considering this

can NOT believe you had to go to wikipedia

This "what if" is absolutely ridiculous.

Are all pregnant women going to stop driving cars? I'd wager a darned site more pregnant women die in car crashes than of swine flu.

Don't really see the connection there Alpine. Do you not try to avoid a risk if there is something you are more at risk of? If car crashes are the most common reason for death of pregnant women then by that token you shouldn't take steps to prevent anything else, might as well stop getting BP checked and no more scans etc.

I'm in Scotland and got my invitation yesterday, have already made my appointment.

Er... shame I have to explain this to you. But we all know driving is a risky activity. So my question is "do pregnant women refrain from driving?". If you still don't understand perhaps someone with more patience can try. :)

Er - the fact that death in a car crash is more likely than death by flu doesn't mean you don't need to take all reasonable steps to avoid getting flu.

Anyway I don't actually know that more pregnant women die in car crashes than of flu, do you have those statistics? Maybe you're too impatient to check your arguments

Wow, AlpinePony - blown away by your analogy. It's all so clear now.

I was pregnant last year and didn't have the jab - glad I didn't - though I did have a horrible flu which started with a bad cough & I did get I high temp. I was a month away from giving birth and it was a wretched experience. By the time I had it the NHS were no longer testing for swine flu, I could have had a private test which would have cost me 150 pounds - I didn't bother.

I refused vaccination because I was concerned about thimerosal in the GSK Pandemrix and was generally worried about having any kind of vaccination while pregnant. I have never had a flu jab before and didn't feel comfortable with messing with my immune system, or the baby's. I was very lucky I didn't get more ill with the flu. It wasn't an easy decision to make, but if I were in the same position again I would do the same.

In this article in the Guardian, Prof Salisbury appears to be calling pregnant women who refuse the jab 'foolhardy' - which is paternalistic BS. It's a very personal decision and pregnant women shouldn't be bullied into it. No one knows the possible long term effects of the jab - that's a fact. www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/30/pregnant-women-flu-jab-list

Good luck to all the pregnant women this flu season. I don't envy you.