Breastfeeding plays a critical role in providing essential nutrients and antibodies that enhance the health of new-borns and infants, supporting their immune systems and overall growth and development. Healthcare professionals, universally recommend breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant's life, in conjunction with an appropriate complementary diet. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has understandably raised concerns among lactating mothers and pregnant women regarding the risks of infection and vaccine safety. Therefore, it is essential to carefully evaluate the potential dangers of COVID-19 transmission within this vulnerable population especially when considering vaccination for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Encouragingly, the United States Food and Drug Administration has granted approval for the use of two COVID-19 vaccines namely, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 and Moderna COVID-19 to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Both vaccines have been approved for administration in pregnant and breastfeeding women, providing much-needed reassurance to those with concerns about vaccine safety. It is important to recognize that the benefits of vaccination for both the mother and the infant far outweigh the risks associated with COVID-19 infection. Therefore, lactating mothers should view vaccination as a vital measure to protect themselves and their infants from the virus. In addition to elaborating on the successes of safety and effectiveness, this review is unique that it also includes current and newly updated evidence published between 2020 and 2025, comprehensively discussing on several newer vaccine platforms together with recent viral variants. Furthermore, it synthesizes information on the transfer of transplacental and a breast-milk antibody that outlines a clear evidence-gap that may direct further research within pregnant and lactating populations.
In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field.