Grant: Operating Grant: ECI grants in Maternal, Reproductive, Child & Youth Health

Young babies are at high risk of severe disease from whooping cough - they can end up in intensive care in hospital, and some babies will die. Whooping cough vaccine (Tdap) has recently been recommended in Canada to be given to all pregnant women to prevent whooping cough in their newborn babies, before they are old enough to be immunized themselves. This recommendation has also been made in many other countries, however we do not fully understand how Tdap works. At the moment, we do not fully understand how much antibody is needed to protect newborn babies against whooping cough, or exactly how the antibodies protect babies. This proposed project is linked to a trial we are doing of Tdap vaccine in pregnant women with HIV in Uganda. In that study pregnant women with HIV will receive Tdap. Their immune response will be compared to pregnant women with HIV given tetanus vaccine and also to pregnant women without HIV given Tdap. In the proposed project we want to use the blood samples collected from the women in the trial, and their newborn babies, to help us to understand how Tdap vaccine works during pregnancy. We will use these samples to examine the amount of antibody produced after Tdap in pregnancy and also test exactly how this antibody interacts with the bacterium which causes whooping cough, called Bordetella pertussis. This will help us to understand how Tdap vaccine works in pregnancy, which will help to ensure we use it in the best way possible to prevent whooping cough in babies.