Can rubella IgG antibodies test impact the pregnancy cycle?

Question

Hello doctor,

We are planning for parenthood. My wife is 30 years old and was recently asked by the gynecologist to undergo rubella quantitative IgG antibodies test. The test report shows value as out of range having value as 14.60 IU/mL, and RDW as 15.2 %. What does these report signifies especially the rubella quantitative IgG antibodies, and does it impacts the pregnancy cycle?

Answer 1

Hi,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

To understand better let me give you few facts about the test. Rubella is a virus, which can affect anybody and the usual clinical presentation may be just a cold or maybe slightly higher respiratory infections with or without rashes. Everyone is exposed to this throughout life, as it might have been the last common cold you got last time. Also the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine everyone gets in childhood. Rubella infects only once in life.

Next, if anyone gets any infection due to any bacteria or virus, etc, they immediately develop IgM (immunoglobulin M), which is body's immediate response. Then after few days, this replaced by IgG, which only means that sometime in past you had the infection. So her result of IgG high means she had rubella sometime in the past 30 years, not recently. If you are still worried about the levels, just postpone pregnancy for next 2 to 3 months. Even if her IgM was high, she is advised to avoid pregnancy for next 2 to 3 months. By then her IgM values come down. So my advice would be to just forget about these unnecessary test, just go ahead and have a great pregnancy.