Quick poll - Pg ladies, how pg are you and will you be having the swine flu jab?

[laurawantsababy]

I am 25 weeks pg with dc2 and very confused.

After another death but with conflicting advice about the jab chosen for the UK what are we to do??

I would love you here everyones choice and thoughts on it to help me out.

Thanks

Are the vaccines to help prevent SF or will you be 100% safe against it. Maybe a stupid question and i know you are never 100% but what if you have the vaccine and endanger yourself and baby but may still catch SF.

Im sure it is a prevention but i dont know how i would feel if baby was born with a problem that was caused by an injection i agreed to have. What affects can SF have on an unborn baby? I know it can kill the mother if they have underlying problems but can the vaccine kill if you have underlying problems?

Im not very confident with the health system and living in a town, working in a small office driving to work and back, personally for me i think i would prefer not to inject something untested. But everyones circumstances are different.

Just noticed this on the nhs website you linked, laura:

"Don't panic: your immune system still functions and the risk of complications is very small. Most pregnant women will only have mild symptoms."

That website says Relenza is recommended for preg women, but according to the Canadian study reported earlier this year, Relenza is more likely to have particles which cross the placenta.

I am seriously unimpressed with the standard of medical information we're being offered. Basically, they don't know what they're recommending us, and they're hedging their bets. That's not good enough for me.

What if you don't take the vaccine, then catch SF and take the vaccine afterwards? Could that be just as good as taking it in advance 'just in case' you might catch it?

If we ask to Celvapan are we likely to get it?

Medical information is crap at the best of times. Its times like this that everyone gets confused because they changed their minds so often.

Its like Tamiflu. Havent they now said that children shouldnt take it yet to start with everyone had it.

I think they are offering Celvapan to lower risk groups. Pregnant women are having Pandemrix because you only need one shot.

I am taking dd for her MMR on Tuesday (after hours and hours of researching) so I will ask the nurse then if we can request Celvapan.

I will let you know what she says. If she says no I may go and see what my GP says.

Looks like we will all be delayed anyway because of the good old Royal Mail this week

The main risk is due to your suppressed immune system. But also another risk is dehydration. When you are feverish, may have diarrhea, and are also unlikely to be up and about having drinks, it is easy to get dehydrated. This is bad for you and the baby. So if you do get it, keep your fever down with paracetamol and drink lots.

A friend who has looked into this and is a dr found they will only be offering the mercury-linked version in the UK which makes it a very hard decision. I have asthma and am getting alot of pressure from my family to get the jab but have massive concerns on what the impact could be. Lack of info from the NHS and govt is horrible.

Rene - that's what I thought. So basically, drink a lot - hardly worth taking a vaccine if that's the main complication we're apparently at 'low risk' of contracting.

This is becoming farcical.

MonstrousMerryHenry its not just dehydration we need to worry about...

There is a document which I have read called 'Pandemic influenza: guidance on preparing maternity services in England - draft for comment' which outlines loads of reasons why pregnant women are more at risk on page 14 of the document. Download 'draft for comment' via this link if you wish to find out more:

www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidanc e/DH_086835

Just been digging around and found out that pregnant women are 7 times more likely to be admitted to intensive care with swine flu (New zealand based data) and apparently most at risk are those in the third trimester, when the baby was large and "squashes up" on the mother's lungs, affecting her breathing and trapping fluid - that does actually make a bit of sense. source here Another article (USA this time) claims pregnant women are 4 times more likely to be hospitalised. link
Sorry if I am repeating information someone has already found. Just think it would be useful to try to quantify the risk.

Just wanted to share some info I have on the mercury content.

Pandemrix contains 5 micrograms of Tiomersal which in turn contains 2.5mcg of mercury. The mercury is to prevent bacteria forming in the multidose vials. Single does vaccines don't contain mercury but they take a lot longer to produce. This vaccines was needed fast so it has been produced in batches.

It's a tiny, tiny dose. The average pregnant women ingests more mercury than this weekly through food. A 10 stone woman on average consumes 6 micrograms of mercury a week in her diet.

In addition, the form of mercury used in the injected vaccine is flushed out by the body much more easily and rapidly than the mercury form which occurs in food.

The vaccines we were all given as children contained mercury. I understand why people are scared about it but it reassured me to read the above info, from the director of the public health institute in the country I live in (Scandinavia).

I also read on the WHO website in a report from 2006 about pandemic vaccines that although the adjuvant squalene had not been tested on pregnant women there had been clinical trials with infants including newborns with squalene-containing injections and that there had been no safety concerns to report.

I like the odds of 2 in a million chance of any ill effects to me or the baby with the vaccine compared to anything between 4 and 10 times more likely than a non-pregnant person to develop serious complications from swine flu. Also that stat about 6% of the deaths in the USA being pregnant women when they account for less than 1% of the population.

I'm confessing that I'm not 100% unworried about it but I will be having the vaccine after much reading and reflection. I'm 23 weeks now and will be 25 plus by the time I get it.

I'm 22 weeks and there is absolutely no way I'm having this jab - EVER!! I have a friend who is a Doctor (not my own GP) and he says that the vaccine being offered has only just been made so there has been no time for adequate testing and on his advice he said "do not be at the front of the queue for this under any circumstances!" Years ago, something happened with untested flu vaccinations which was apparently back in the 50's or 60's (not sure if it was UK or not but there were more people died as a result of complications of having the vaccination than there were who died from the actual virus!

It is also sensible to note that when people employed by the NHS (including Doctors and Nurses) were surveyed to ask if they would be having the swine flu vaccination themselves when available there were far more people saying NO WAY than yes please! I believe around 70% intended to refuse. So what do they know that we are not being told??? Speaks volumes to me!! I'd think very carefully before having this vaccination, especially given the fact that the risk of you catching it is very small in the first place, especially if you are careful with your hygiene and even if you do catch it, the risk of it doing serious harm to you or your unborn baby is minimal. Can't say the same for the vaccine!!!

My sister has asthma and has several other underlying health problems and she had swine flu a couple of months ago, as did her 14 year-old daughter (also asthmatic) and her partner had it also. Yes they were miserably ill (as anyone would be with a bad bout of flu!) and she was off her work for two weeks, her partner and child were ill for one week. I was in contact with her and her family during this time (whilst I was pregnant) and I was only ill for two days with very mild flu symptoms and spent one day in bed. We all made a full recovery and I think the press and general panic amongst people is blowing the impact of this disease way out of proportion!! There are several people die in the UK every year from normal flu, you just don't hear about them because the press aren't interested. Don't be railroaded into something unnecessary and potentially harmful, maybe even lethal in some cases through unwarranted fear.

The people who usually die from seasonal flu are elderly or infirm though. Swine flu is known to cause serious health complications in and even kill otherwise healthy young adults and nobody really understands why.

In your vague comments reported second hand from a doctor friend I think you might be referring to the 1976 swine flu outbreak (dubbed the "swine flu fiasco" by the media at the time) in the USA where 1 person died of swine flu, 40 million were subsequently vaccinated and 25 people died following the vaccinations. So yes, more people dies after the vaccines than did from the disease. Nobody knows whether they died because of the vaccine or if it was coincidence. 25 random people out of 40 million probably die each day anyway. The reason I mention this is that the 2009 strain og H1N1 influensa is known to be more virulent and more deadly than the 1976 one. More than one person has died from it before the vaccine is even available. Over 100 people have died from it in the UK alone, one third of whom had no underlying medical issues.

I'm quite exasperated with people using vague unsubstantiated scare stories to frighten people off the vaccine.

It's your own choice if you don't want to have it but for goodness sake don't try and persuade other people not to get immunised. If anything you should be happy that we're in the queue ready to be your guinea pigs. Once we've had the vaccine it WILL have been tested on pregnant women.

And there is a 999,999 in a million chance that they will find absolutely no ill effects.

Its not the thermisal in the preg woman vaccine i'm concerned about its the adjuvant which can make your immune system overact and cause pre-emclampsia !!! This vaccine has not been tested enough I think and I might have jab if I dan have celvapan .

well said midnightsun, at last someone with a bit of sense! I just cant see why people are still poo pooing the reality of swine flu, and the potential seriousness of it. And I cant understand why some of the general public think they know more than the health professionals and scientists, WHO etc. Why would the government want to spend all that money on a vaccine, if they didnt think we needed it?

Upsydaisy it's a good point about the adjuvant squalene. It's always been the WHO's advice that wherever possible, pregnant women should be given an adjuvant-free vaccine because there is a lot of data available proving that there are no ill effects with these types of vaccines.

They've also always said though, that if no adjuvant-free vaccine is available, then pregnant women should be immunised with the vaccine that IS available as the WHO recommendation is still that the disease is far higher a risk than either vaccine.

WHO reports they see absolutely no reason to believe that the adjuvant-containing vaccine (i.e. Pandremix) is anything other than safe for pregnant woman, on the basis of knowledge about the ingredients and experience with other patient groups and other vaccines. BUT they don't have clinical data to prove it so, which is why they are urging caution if an alternative (e.g. Celvapan) is available.

Countries have to sign contracts with the drug companies years in advance for the pharmaceutical firm to produce a vaccine if and when a pandemic happens, and the UK, along with many other nations, chose Glaxo SmithKline, the manufacturer of Pandemrix. That's why we are being offered this one, mercury, adjuvant and all, and it is in line with the WHO guidelines because in the absence of the adjuvant-free vaccine, the NHS should be offering pregnant women the vaccine they have.

Interestingly the WHO reported in 2006 that vaccines containing the adjuvant squalene had been tested clinically in infants including newborns with no safety concerns.

www.who.int/vaccine_safety/reports/Jun_2006/en/index.html

We all feel we know too little about the vaccine because it's new and the unknown is extremely scary. The media has not helped by quoting maverick medics who go against the majority advice and say they wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. But they too can be irrational, they are human: to put this in perspective, I know a senior doctor of microbiology who is head of department in a major hospital and he lets his shower at home run for 5 full minutes on the highest temperature every morning before getting in it as he is afraid of Legionnaires disease: just because some very qualified and intelligent health professionals fear something does not mean we all have to do what they say they would do in our shoes, IYSWIM. I also believe that the doctors and other health professionals advising against the vaccine are general practitioners, nurses etc people with a lot of competence but not expertise in this field, whereas the immunology, virus and pandemic experts are the ones urging people to have it.

Although it feels like a burden having the decision on our own shoulders, it's pretty great isn't it that we have access to such a variety of information sources online and we are in a position to inform ourselves and make a choice. In the old days we would have to either blindly trust the doctor or not, without knowing any of the reasons why.

I am a strong believer in education and information eliminating fear. It has worked for me anyway, even though I think I might have become a bit obsessive about reading up on the swine flu and vaccine materials now...

Good luck with the choices, ladies. It's not easy and each of us has to do whatever feels right in our own situation.

midnightsun, many thanks for your detailed comments....

can you please point me in the direction of where you got the stats from about Pandemrix containing 5 micrograms of Tiomersal which in turn contains 2.5mcg of mercur....... and on average consumes 6 micrograms of mercury a week in her diet.

I'm be interested to know more.

Cheers!

26 weeks and yes.

Given that I can't think of any other illness I could be exposed to at the moment that might actually kill me - which would not be good for the baby or my two daughters and husband.

The basic flu vaccine is the same every year - they just slot in and out different epitopes - so the flu vaccine isn't as untested as we might think.

(BTW I'm a science doctor not a medical doctor).

what are the risks of swine flu to newborns? haven't seen much reported on that has anyone?

i was thinking it might be worth having mainly so that my newborns (expecting twins in 3 weeks) are protected through breastfeeding... esp as i have a DH working in schools and a DD at nursery so risk of it coming into our house is quite high!

thoughts?

I live in Norway and it was actually in a newspaper article where the Director of the Norwegian Institute for Public Health was interviewed along with a senior researcher from the Norwegian State Department for Medicines.

Here is a translation from the article, which I link to below.

NB for information, Norwegian health policy is ultra-conservative when it comes to medicine use, particularly in pregnancy. The guideline for alcohol in pregnancy has been total abstinence for over a decade now and most women here, on public guidelines, cut out coffee and don't even take paracetamol for headaches when pregnant. Mercury has been banned in Norway since January 2008 because of fears over the risks, but an exception has been made for Pandemrix because multi-dose vials was the only way to deliver enough doses to the time schedule they believed necessary. This convinces me of how seriously they are taking the threat of a second wave of the virus.

Here's the relevant part of the article, the same contents can be found in a Medicines Agency Report.

---

"Each dose of the vaccine Norway has delivery of, Pandemrix, contains 5 micrograms of Tiomersal, which contains 2,5 micrograms of quicksilver (mercury)."

" 'It is an insignificantly small amount. A woman weighing 60kg of childbearing age ingests at least 6 micrograms of mercury a week through her food intake," siad researcher Christian Syvertsen of the Medicines Agency to Aftenposten on Tuesday."

"Readers were not necessarily convinced. Many have read online that it is much worse to inject mercury than to eat it. "

" 'No, this is not correct. Ethyl mercury which is injected is flushed out by the body much quicker than methyl mercury which is the type ingested through the diet," says divisional director Hanne Nøkleby of the Institute of Public Health."

The link is here but I'm afraid it's all in Norwegian.

www.aftenposten.no/helse/article3322366.ece

The dietary habits here might be slightly different from the UK in that women eat more fish. You can google the mercury per gram content in various seafood items.

I did find this page on the WHO website about Thiomersal but it isn't specifically about Pandemrix.

www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/questions/en/index.html

Page 31 of this NHS briefing document on the H1N1 vaccinations also specifies the amount of Thiomersal (5 micrograms) of which mercury (2.5 micrograms) in the vaccine:

www.nes.scot.nhs.uk/hai/pandemic_flu/documents/H1N1trainerv1.028-09-09_000.pdf

The USA FDA says that methylmercury is the main source of human mercury exposure, through fish and shellfish and that other forms of mercury are minor contributors to human mercury exposure. Further the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) specifies a reference dose (RfD) which is "an amount of methylmercury, which when ingested daily over a lifetime is anticipated to be without adverse health effects to humans, including sensitive subpopulations. At the RfD or below, exposures are expected to be safe. The U.S. EPA derived a RfD for methylmercury of 0.1 µg/kg bw/day (microgram per kilogram of body weight per day)." So for a person who is 120 lbs (or 55 kg), the reference dose for methylmercury would be 5.5 micrograms per day.

www.epa.gov/mercury/reportover.htm

www.epa.gov/fishadvisories/advice/factsheet.html

Hope this provides some pointers if you are looking for more info.

I have to say I have been following the topic quite closely in the Norwegian and British press at home and think the Norwegian press has been better at pinning down public health experts and putting the questions of worried readers to them in order to get fact-based answers, whereas the British press has focused very much on the sensational stories, people who died, people who nearly died but miraculously didn't, dragging up horror stories from historical drug scandals etc.

Over here we are also only offered Pandemrix, and the normally hyper-cautious and conservative public health body is 100% encouraging pregnant women to have the vaccine, against all precedents. While there has not been the same peak or number of cases here as in the UK, they are predicting that cases are on the rise this week and possibly up to a quarter of the population could be infected by Christmas.

They stress that for most people, including pregnant women, it will be a mild illness, nothing to fear and with no serious consequences, so no reason to panic. But because there is no way of predicting which otherwise healthy women are the unlucky few that will develop dangerous or even fatal complications, they want to follow the WHO guidelines which is to vaccinate us.

sorry that (very long) answer above was addressed to waitingwaiting who asked for references on the amount of Thiormersal and mercury in Pandremix compared to average dietary consumption.

Wow midnightsun, that is so kind of you to take the time to write all of that for us- it is genuinely interesting and very reassuring. Cheers!

Has anyone actually been offered the jab yet?

I had a midwife appointment this morning and she didn't even mention it.

Flumpity I haven't read much about the danger to newborns but instinct tells me swine flu would not be good for a newborn baby. Having said that I've also read the the reason young healthy adults are so virently attacked by swine flu is that the extremity of the illness is in direct proportion to the strength of the body's immune response, so the elderly and very young people are not at such great risk.

I read up a bit on how dangerous it is for small children last night, thinking about my 3 year old and I did find that there have been few if any deaths with under-3s, apart from the child of the young pregnant mum who died last week, the baby was delivered early so I'm not sure if it was swine flu or other premature issues at the root of it.

In Norway they have enough vaccine doses for the entire population for those who want it and initially will not vaccinate children under 3 although they are fairly certain that this will be reduced to a minimum age limit of 6 months in due course.

From what I remember the guidance I read here indicates that if the mother is vaccinated in pregnancy, her immune system's antibodies are passed through the placenta to the baby and these last for a while (unspecified) after birth, even more so if the mother breastfeeds. I gather it is less dangerous to vaccinate a baby via its mother before birth than to do it as a newborn because the mother's body acts a filter for the strongest chemicals rather than inflicting them directly on the baby's own organs.

If I find any concrete links I'll post them.

I think the first doses will be available next week at the earliest.