Evidences of emerging pain consciousness during prenatal development: a narrative review.

BACKGROUND: The study of consciousness has always been considered a challenge for neonatologists, even more when considering the uterine period. Our review aimed to individuate at what gestational age the fetus, which later became a premature infant, can feel the perception of external stimuli. Therefore, the aim of our review was to study the onset of consciousness during the fetal life. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A literature search was performed in Medline-PubMed database. We included all papers found with the following MeSH words: "consciousness or cognition or awareness or comprehension or cognitive or consciousness of pain" in combination with "embryo or fetus or fetal life or newborn." Studies were selected if titles and/or abstracts suggested an association between formation of consciousness (the basics of neurodevelopment) and preterm infant or fetus. Titles and abstracts were first screened by three independent reviewers according to Cochrane Collaboration's recommendations. RESULTS: From the literature review, we found only 8 papers describing the onset of consciousness in the transition period from fetus to premature newborn. Therefore, according to these papers, we temporally analyzed the formation of the thalamocortical connections that are the basis of consciousness. CONCLUSIONS: We can conclude that from a neuroanatomical point of view, it is rather unlikely that the infant can be seen as a conscious human before 24 weeks of gestational age, thus before all the thalamocortical connections are established. Further literature data have to confirm this hypothesis.

COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant and lactating women: a systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: The concern of undergoing vaccination during pregnancy and lactation, in absence of data on safety and efficacy in these target populations, is subject of ongoing debate nationally and internationally. However, the only real prophylactic strategy against COVID-19 is still mass vaccination, which means to vaccinate infants and pregnant and lactating women. AREAS COVERED: This is a systematic review aiming to evaluate the safety and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant and lactating women and their newborns. We did advanced research on PubMed and Google Scholar, and searched for any evidence also on ClinicalTrials.gov. Results refer to a timeline going until 12 June 2021. EXPERT OPINION: Our efforts must be directed to vaccine more and more population groups which have been preliminarily excluded from the vaccination campaign. Studies have not so far highlighted plausible adverse effects in vaccinated pregnant women or in their newborns. Reactogenicity across lactating and pregnant women does not seem to differ from general population. Likewise, abortion rate does not differ from non-vaccinated pregnant women studied before the COVID-19 pandemic. It also seems that a major amount of anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulins is transferred through the placenta and the breastmilk to the newborn, providing humoral immunity.