Are you getting a flu shot?

[alexis]

Hrm. Well, it's a real journal and a real study. OTOH, that site is really, really biased. I'd want an immunologist to read the full text and give me their take on how meaningful it is.

As for Hep B: A lot of people are symptomless carriers. It's a problem in Asian-Americans (Hep B is endemic in some Asian countries, particularly China). The SF Health Department has run campaigns encouraging Hep B vaccination in the Asian community because of familial transmission.

I had a flu shot at 36 weeks. Baby won't be able to get one (flu shots may not even be effective in under-2s, I've seen conflicting advice). Baby may get some protection from me this way. I have a preschooler, so she just brings every germ home.

[jean]

So the day after I had my shot, my ring didn't fit...maybe because of inflammatory response? Is this a big study or a little one? Is the inflammatory response immediate and does it "calm down" after an extended amount of time (making risk for pre-e immediate rather than long term), or according to this study, does having the shot make you more at risk for it anytime in the future? (Sorry, I have a really hard time understanding all of these studies without having someone to explain them to me-maybe it's pregnancy brain)

[blythe]

The inflammatory response elicited by vaccination is substantially milder and more transient than seen in infectious illness, arguing for the clinical value of vaccination. However, further research is needed to confirm that the mild inflammatory response elicited by vaccination is benign in pregnancy.

I've been told that the first rule of medicine is "do no harm" so I can see why they want to make sure that the inflammatory response they're seeing isn't a problem. That being said, from my read of the abstract, they also aren't showing that it *is* a problem, just speculating that theoretically, *maybe*, it could be. I'm pretty sure they would need to run a completely different study to see if the flu shot and the inflammatory response from it was correlated with preeclampsia.

My bias is that I'd focus more on the first sentence I quoted - the inflammatory response they saw from the flu shot was a lot milder than what happens when women actually get the flu.

[caryn]

Of *course* there's a mild inflammatory response to the flu shot - another term for that is "immunity"! The innate response to foreign proteins is by definition inflammatory. The acquired response to the foreign proteins that protects against flu cannot develop without introducing the foreign proteins in non-contagious form and this is always going to trigger an innate response as well.

Let me know if that's too jargony and I will translate.

[caryn]

Here's a reference from an intro to immunology text (I so love that these are available online!):

Once infectious agents have penetrated tissues, another innate defense mechanism comes into play, namely acute inflammation.

http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/ghaffar/innate.htm

I'd confirm with someone who knows more immunology than me, but this is just a fact about how the world works. I'm frankly becoming a bit horrified that anyone would spend perfectly good research dollars confirming things from page one of the intro textbook so I may have to pull the full text of your study and read it charitably.

[alexis]

Well, if ANY inflammatory response could trigger PE, then so could catching the flu. Which we know is dangerous in other ways.