SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies Detected in Mother’s Milk Post-Vaccination

This article has been Reviewed by the following groups

Read the full article See related articles

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Abstract

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has infected over 127 million people worldwide, with almost 2.8 million deaths at the time of writing. Since no lactating individuals were included in initial trials of vaccine safety and efficacy, research on SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in lactating women and the potential transmission of passive immunity to the infant through mother’s milk is needed to guide patients, clinicians, and policy makers on whether to recommend immunization during the worldwide effort to curb the spread of this virus.

Research Aims

(1) To determine whether SARS-CoV-2 specific immunoglobins are found in human milk after vaccination, and (2) to characterize the time course and types of immunoglobulins present.

Methods

A longitudinal cohort study of lactating women ( N = 7) who planned to receive both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine between December 2020 and January 2021 provided milk samples. These were collected pre-vaccination and at 11 additional timepoints, with the last sample at 14 days after the second dose of vaccine. Samples were analyzed for levels of SARS-CoV-2 specific immunoglobulins A and G (IgA and IgG).

Results

We observed significantly elevated levels of SARS-CoV-2 specific IgG and IgA antibodies in human milk beginning approximately 7 days after the initial vaccine dose, with an IgG-dominant response.

Conclusions

Maternal vaccination results in SARS-CoV-2 specific immunoglobulins in human milk that may be protective for infants.

Article activity feed

  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.23.21252328: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Written consent to use milk samples for research was obtained.
    IRB: Sample collection was approved by the institutional review board (IRB #06-108A) of Providence Health & Services.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableParticipants: Breast milk samples were collected from 6 women between December 2020 and February 2021.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    To determine the relative concentration of volunteer Spike-specific IgG or IgA antibodies, protein dilutions of IgG or IgA (250ng/ml, 125ng/ml, 62.5ng/ml, 31.25ng/ml, 15.6ng/ml, 7.8 ng/ml, 3.9ng/ml, and none) were coated in the first column of wells on each ELISA plate.
    IgA
    suggested: (GenWay Biotech Inc. Cat# GWB-ZCD125, RRID:AB_11230587)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.