Since the start of the pandemic, uncertainty has plagued many mines of expecting mothers and those planning to conceive. Little was known regarding the degree of harm COVID-19 will cause on the mother and their developing child. Promising findings from UT Southwestern has suggested that pregnant women who test positive for COVID-19 and their newborn babies have a low risk of developing severe symptoms. Their study was published in JAMA Network Open.
In their findings, 95% of women who tested positive for COVID-19 during pregnancy had no adverse outcomes. The study also saw that the virus was transmitted to the fetus in just 3% of the cases.
"Our findings are that approximately 5 percent of all delivered women with COVID-19 infection develop severe or critical illness. Five percent is a major concern when a pandemic is making its way through a population; however, it's lower than previous reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)," says Emily Adhikari, M.D., an obstetrician, gynecologist, and first author of the study. "Most women with asymptomatic or mild infection will be relieved to know that their babies are unlikely to be affected by the virus."
The research team followed 3,374 mothers, 252 of whom tested positive for the virus during pregnancy, from March through August. The group was predominantly Hispanic (75 percent), followed by Black (18 percent) and white (4 percent). There were no significant differences between the subjects in age, number of previous births, BMI, or diabetes. Pathologists who examined placentas found that the majority were not affected by the virus.
"Our goal is to develop evidence-based guidelines for the majority of pregnant women who are recovering at home," Adhikari says. "It's difficult to predict who will become severely ill, which is why prevention strategies such as hand-washing, masking, and social distancing are still extremely important."
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