Vaccination Recommendations: Rubella in Pregnancy
The evidence available at present indicates that there is no real risk of congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) if the rubella vaccine is given in a pregnant woman or in the months prior to conception.
Data available in the Register of rubella vaccine in the United States (Oct. 2001), National Surveillance of CRS in the UK (April 2001), Laboratory Enders and Partners of Switzerland and the Institute for Virology, Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, Germany (September . 2001), show that of 680 live births to mothers inadvertently vaccinated susceptible than three months before conception or during pregnancy, not a single case of CRS occurred, so the real risk is “zero.”
Vaccination campaigns against rubella conducted in the countries of the Americas bring knowledge to the security of the application of the vaccine RA27 / 3 during the month before conception or in pregnant women. Monitoring data updated to 2006, show that of 24,925 women who were vaccinated against rubella vaccination campaigns in adults in the Americas, did not identify any cases of CRS. Prospective controlled studies published in the scientific literature have consistently documented the non-occurrence of CRS cases resulting from inadvertent vaccination against rubella.
Therefore, in recent years there have been changes in recommendations for vaccination against rubella during pregnancy. Thus the recommendation to wait 3 months to get pregnant after anti rubella vaccination, raised by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in 1998, was reduced to 28 days in 2001. The rationale for this recommendation is theoretical, based on an analogy of viremia that occurs with wild-type virus with respect to the immune response to vaccination with attenuated virus.
In various meetings with groups of experts to evaluate vaccination strategies for the elimination of CRS, strengthening the safety of the vaccine if applied during pregnancy. During the meeting of Technical Advisory Group on Vaccine Preventable Diseases (TAG) of 2000, it states: “There are substantial data available documenting the absence of any risk of rubella vaccine during pregnancy. For women who have been vaccinated and subsequently diagnosed as pregnant during the vaccination is not recommended abortion … “It does not advise women to avoid pregnancy after receiving rubella vaccine as there is no known risk of adverse fetal outcomes” .
Although not documented SRC is a real risk associated with rubella vaccine, the recommendation not to vaccinate pregnant women against rubella is to avoid vaccine-associated complications that may eventually occur during pregnancy, including the likelihood that spontaneous abortion or newborn present disturbances resulting from other causes, not related to the vaccine.