A mother's vaccine, a newborn's shield: protection that passes from one body to the next

A newborn has almost no defences of its own — and Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacterium growing resistant to antibiotics, kills thousands of infants every year, most of them in poorer countries. At Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, David Rosen's team tried borrowing the mother's defences instead: they vaccinated pregnant mice, and the antibodies crossed into the pups and turned up in the mothers' milk. When the two-week-old pups were exposed to lethal doses of the bacterium, more than 80% of those from vaccinated mothers survived — against none at all for one strain and fewer than 35% for the other among pups of unvaccinated mothers. The study, published in Science Advances, is the first evidence that vaccinating mothers could protect babies this way. It is mouse work, years from a human vaccine — but it opens a practical route to trials, and a way to guard babies during the exact weeks they are most defenceless.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation