{"id":10042,"date":"2025-08-13T16:42:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T21:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10042"},"modified":"2025-08-13T16:42:43","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T21:42:43","slug":"pregnancy-reduces-covid-19-vaccine-immunity-against-novel-variants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/08\/13\/pregnancy-reduces-covid-19-vaccine-immunity-against-novel-variants\/","title":{"rendered":"Pregnancy reduces COVID-19 vaccine immunity against novel variants"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41541-025-01236-4\">Nature<\/a> Pregnant women are at heightened risk for severe outcomes from infectious diseases like COVID-19, yet were not included in initial vaccine trials, which may contribute to low booster uptake (15% or lower). We explored the serological and cellular responses to COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccines (i.e., ancestral and BA.5) in pregnant and age-matched, non-pregnant females to identify how pregnancy affects immunity against the vaccine and novel variants. Antibodies from pregnant women were less cross-reactive to non-vaccine antigens, including XBB.1.5 and JN.1. Non-pregnant females showed greater IgG1:IgG3 ratios and neutralization against all variants. In contrast, pregnant women had lower IgG1:IgG3 ratios and neutralization but increased antibody-dependent NK cell cytokine production and neutrophil phagocytosis, especially against novel variants. Pregnancy increased memory CD4+ T cells, IFN\u03b3 production, monofunctional dominance, and fatty acid oxidation. Pregnancy may reduce the breadth, composition, and magnitude of humoral and cellular immunity, particularly in response to novel variants.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nature Pregnant women are at heightened risk for severe outcomes from infectious diseases like COVID-19, yet were not included in initial vaccine trials, which may contribute to low booster uptake (15% or lower). We explored the serological and cellular responses to COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccines (i.e., ancestral and BA.5) in pregnant and age-matched, non-pregnant females [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid","category-published-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10043,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10042\/revisions\/10043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}