ProQuad Use In Pregnancy & Lactation

Pregnancy: Studies have not been conducted with ProQuad in pregnant women. It is also not known whether ProQuad can cause harm to the fetus when administered to a pregnant woman or can affect reproduction capacity. Therefore, ProQuad should not be administered to pregnant females; furthermore, pregnancy should be avoided for 3 months following vaccination (see INDICATIONS, CONTRAINDICATIONS, and PRECAUTIONS).
In counseling women who are inadvertently vaccinated when pregnant or who become pregnant within 3 months of vaccination, the physician should be aware of the following: (1) Reports have indicated that contracting wild-type measles during pregnancy enhances fetal risk. Increased rates of spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, congenital defects and prematurity have been observed subsequent to wild-type measles during pregnancy. There are no adequate studies of the attenuated (vaccine) strain of measles virus in pregnancy. However, it would be prudent to assume that the vaccine strain of virus is also capable of inducing adverse fetal effects; (2) Mumps infection during the first trimester of pregnancy may increase the rate of spontaneous abortion. Although mumps vaccine virus has been shown to infect the placenta and fetus, there is no evidence that it causes congenital malformations in humans; (3) In a 15-year survey involving over 1100 pregnant women who received rubella vaccine within 3 months before or after conception (of whom 635 received the Wistar RA 27/3 strain), none of the newborns had abnormalities compatible with congenital rubella syndrome; and (4) Wild-type varicella can sometimes cause harm to the fetus.
Nursing Mothers: It is not known whether measles, mumps, or varicella virus is secreted in human milk. Studies have shown that lactating postpartum women vaccinated with live attenuated rubella vaccine may secrete the virus in breast milk and transmit it to breast-fed infants. In the infants who developed serological evidence of rubella infection, none exhibited severe disease; however, one exhibited mild clinical illness typical of acquired rubella. Therefore, caution should be exercised if ProQuad is inadvertently administered to a nursing woman.