Peer-reviewed article
Impact of pregnancy on longitudinal pertussis antibody responses to Tdap vaccine in Guatemala.
Varun K Phadke, Robert A Bednarczyk, Herberth Maldonado, John P McCracken, Maria Sundaram et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study compared how pregnant and non-pregnant women in Guatemala responded to the Tdap vaccine (which protects against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis). Both groups had similar antibody levels before vaccination. At 2 months after vaccination, non-pregnant women had higher antibody levels, but by 9 months both groups' antibody levels had declined and were similar. The findings support vaccinating pregnant women with Tdap and suggest vaccinating non-pregnant women could help in countries with low maternal vaccination coverage.
Key points
- Pre-vaccination antibody concentrations were similar between pregnant and non-pregnant women
- At 2 months post-vaccination, antibody concentrations against vaccine antigens were higher in non-pregnant women
- By 9 months, antibody concentrations had decayed in both groups and were no longer significantly different
- Maternal Tdap vaccination coverage remains suboptimal in many low-income countries
- Tdap vaccination of women of childbearing age could be a supplemental strategy to improve coverage
Limitations
The study only measured antibody responses and did not assess clinical outcomes such as protection against disease or rates of pertussis in infants. The study is limited to Guatemala and may not reflect responses in other populations or settings.
Abstract
Maternal immunization with tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine is recommended in many countries, but coverage in many low-income countries remains suboptimal. Targeted vaccination of women of child-bearing age could be a supplemental strategy to address this gap, but there are limited longitudinal immunogenicity data in this population outside of high-income countries. We compared antibody responses to Tdap between 30 non-pregnant women and 156 pregnant women enrolled in a clinical trial of maternal Tdap vaccination in Guatemala. Pre-vaccination antibody concentrations among both groups were similar for all vaccine antigens. At 2 months post-vaccination, antibody concentrations against vaccine antigens increased in both groups and were higher among non-pregnant women. By 9 months, antibody concentrations had decayed and were no longer different by study group. These findings reinforce existing recommendations for Tdap vaccination with every pregnancy. Vaccination of non-pregnant women may be considered in settings where maternal Tdap coverage is low.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis) vaccination of pregnant and non-pregnant women
- Population
- 30 non-pregnant women and 156 pregnant women in Guatemala
Key finding
At 2 months post-vaccination, antibody concentrations against vaccine antigens were higher among non-pregnant women