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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – COLUMBUS, Ohio) – A new study from Ohio State University Medical Center shows that depression during pregnancy, a very common condition, might make matters worse for pregnant women this flu season. The study sought to find how depression, which affects as many as 20 percent of all pregnant women*, changed a woman’s response to a flu vaccine to provide clues about how she might respond to a real infection.
Whether or not she suffers from depression, as a woman’s immune system changes during pregnancy, she can be more vulnerable to the flu and at greater risk for complications. Stress and depression only make matters worse.
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“It’s been really well established with research over the last 25 to 30 years that stress and depression affect immune function in a clinically meaningful way in people who are not pregnant, but research on pregnant women has been scarce,” says lead researcher Lisa Christian, Ph.D.
In the flu vaccine study, 22 pregnant women completed questionnaires about their depressive symptoms and gave blood samples before receiving a seasonal flu shot. Between six and nine days later, a second round of blood samples was collected. When Dr. Christian’s team compared questionnaire responses to blood samples, they found that emotions and physical symptoms made a difference in how they responded to the vaccine, which may indicate how they would respond to a real infection. In fact, women with the highest scores on the depression scale according to the questionnaire had about twice as much of a protein in their blood called macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) which promotes inflammation in the body.
Dr. Christian’s study appears online and is scheduled for print publication later in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
“Even though they still had a mild response, we found that more depressed women had a greater and more exaggerated reaction to the vaccine than women who were less depressed,” says Dr. Christian. “In the context of an actual illness, depressed women would be expected to have a much more robust, extended reaction.”
Even though doctors recommend flu shots during pregnancy, nearly 90 percent of pregnant women have avoided them in recent years.*** Toria Farley was one of them. She got her first flu shot only after signing up for a clinical trial involving them. Until she was pregnant with her second child, she never gave it a second thought.
“The flu shot I got during the study was the first I’ve ever had. I’ve never been the type of person to get sick, so I’ve always thought ‘I can’t get the flu’ or ‘I won’t get the flu’,” Toria says.
Doctors know about a million women each year will suffer depression during pregnancy,* but what they don’t know is exactly who it will be, underscoring the notion that all women should get flu shots. Experts say the same goes for the H1N1 flu shots as well. If women are pregnant and think they’re suffering from depression, they should talk to their doctor about what’s best for them and their baby.
Sources: *Depression During Pregnancy, American Pregnancy Association, retrieved from: http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancyhealth/depressionduringpregnancy.html
**National Vital Statistics Report, Volume 57, Number 19, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Data for 2008. Retrieved October 2009 from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_19.htm
***Prevention and Control of Influenza, Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), 2008, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, August 2008, retrieved from: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5707a1.htm
**** Depressive symptoms predict exaggerated inflammatory responses to an in vivo immune challenge among pregnant women, Journal of Brain, Behavior and Immunity, May 2009, retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com ; http://dx.doi.org – doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
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