 |  |  | | | Influenza vaccination and childhood leukaemia | | | | |
| | Release Date: 24th October 2006
Influenza Vaccination during Pregnancy and Childhood Leukaemia
The Times and Daily Mail (Tue 24th Oct) each report that pregnant women are expected be offered vaccination against influenza, and each of the reports suggests that this is intended, at least in part, to reduce the risk of childhood leukaemia. Leukaemia Research realizes that this may cause anxiety to pregnant women and to parents and has prepared a brief comment on these news reports.
The recommendation that all pregnant women should be offered the option of receiving flu vaccination is based on the work of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). The minutes of the JCVI clearly show that the committee's advice is based solely on protecting mother and child against influenza and that leukaemia was not mentioned.
The press reports appear to have combined the recommendation on vaccination with a recent report in the American Journal of Epidemiology which suggested a link between influenza during pregnancy and childhood leukaemia. There is no basis for linking the two issues. The American report is based on a small number of cases and relies upon maternal recall of events during pregnancy which is well known to carry a risk of bias. The difference in reported incidence of flu between the two groups in this study is also small – 16% of mothers of children with leukaemia against 14% of mothers of unaffected children reporting experiencing flu or pneumonia during pregnancy.
There is at present no consensus amongst scientists that influenza, or other infections, during pregnancy increase the risk of childhood leukaemia and there is no published evidence that flu vaccination during pregnancy would have any impact on the risk of leukaemia in offspring. |
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