MINI-Nor Maternal and Infant Immunity against Vaccine Preventable Diseases in Norway

The aim of the study is to identify how mother and child are protected against infection:

• How well are pregnant women at the end of pregnancy protected against vaccine-preventable diseases?
• How much of this protection is transferred to the child during pregnancy?
• Does the protection the child has at birth last all the way up to the first vaccine at the age of three months?
• Which factors may affect the degree of protection provided by first-year vaccines?

Children in Norway are now being offered a combination vaccine that protects against 6 diseases (diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, H.influenzae type b infection and hepatitis B). The study will investigate how effective this protection is by measuring the level of antibodies against these diseases in the blood of mother and child. Blood samples are taken from mother in gestational week 35-37, from umbilical cord blood at birth and blood tests are taken from the child at 3 months and 13 months of age.

The MINI-Nor study is now extended to include measurements of antibodies against CoV. The aim is to evaluate the immunity against CoV in women at the end of pregnancy and to what extent this immunity is transferred to their children.