Pregnant women in their third trimester can safely receive the whooping cough vaccine to prevent infections in newborns, a recent study from the UK suggests. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious disease. Its symptoms are initially mild but it can lead to serious and fatal complications, particularly for children under three months old. Recent increases in whooping cough infections, some resulting in deaths of new borns, prompted the UK to develop a new vaccine program in 2012. The program offered combined vaccines against diphtheria, pertussis and polio to over 700,000 women in the third trimester of pregnancy. “The benefit of maternal immunization is that the mother’s protective antibodies are passed on to the baby before it is born, giving it the best protection it needs before they are old enough to be vaccinated themselves,” Philip Bryan told Reuters Health in an email

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