My cousin is currently pregnant and set to be due sometime this month and I’m sure many of us might know someone who is currently pregnant, so the question of how the COVID-19 pandemic affects pregnancies has come to mind. It is known that pregnant women such as my cousin, are disproportionately affected by respiratory illnesses and this can result in an increase in maternal mortality rates (Dashraath et al.,2020). Although most COVID-19 infections are mild, there can be more severe coronavirus infections that lead to various risk factors. So, how harmful is COVID-19 to pregnancies?
A study titled the World Association of Perinatal Medicine (WAPM) study was done to measure the number of pregnant women that were confirmed to have COVID-19 from 22 different countries and the adverse fetal outcome after giving birth (Di Mascio et al., 2020). Approximately 50% of these women had shown symptoms (i.e. coughing, fever, and shortness of breath) and during this study, 11.1% of women were admitted into the ICU. The study analysis had shown that diagnosis during the first trimester of pregnancy and symptoms that show shortness of breath are directly associated with adverse maternal outcomes (such as admittance into the ICU) and adverse fetal outcomes, but there is not enough evidence showing that transmission from the mother to the newborn is possible. This study had also displayed that women who were pregnant and diagnosed with COVID-19 had a rate of death of about 4% after giving birth, however, these rates were mostly due to complications with premature births. There was also a slight increase of stillbirths and this could be explained by COVID-19 because infection can result in complications with blood circulation due to increased inflammation as well as platelet activation, but there is not enough evidence to really support this hypothesis (Di Mascio et al., 2020). Although there is not enough evidence associating the number of stillbirths and maternal deaths with COVID-19, there is certain evidence that COVID-19 can lead to a variety of risks in pregnancies so, it is important to understand that there are risks and to promote the safety of pregnant women during this pandemic.
References:
Dashraath, P., Wong, J., Lim, M., Lim, L., Li, S., Biswas, A., . . . Su, L. (2020, June). Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and pregnancy. Retrieved October 04, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7270569/
Di Mascio D;Sen C;Saccone G;Galindo A;Grünebaum A;Yoshimatsu J;Stanojevic M;Kurjak A;Chervenak F;Rodríguez Suárez MJ;Gambacorti-Passerini ZM;Baz MLAA;Aguilar Galán EV;López YC;De León Luis JA;Hernández IC;Herraiz I;Villalain C;Venturella R;Rizzo G;Mappa I. (n.d.). Risk factors associated with adverse fetal outcomes in pregnancies affected by Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): A secondary analysis of the WAPM study on COVID-19. Retrieved October 04, 2020, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32975205/
Hey Kathy!
ReplyDeleteYour post was super informative and had proposed questions I had never really thought of before in regard to those who may have Covid-19 while simultaneously being pregnant. In reading your post, I was wondering if having a pre-existing condition related to either the respiratory or circulatory system coupled with a positive diagnosis of Covid-19, affected the other symptoms often associated with pregnancy (morning sickness, fatigue, increased urination, etc.)? Another question that came into mind, was although it is not thought that Covid-19 can be transmitted vaginally or via c-section, is it possible that transmission can occur through feeding via the breastmilk? All in all, your post was very interesting to read and discuss with some of my friends as we all are aspiring physicians and some of us plan on going into maternal-fetal medicine.
Hi Kathy,
ReplyDeleteI found your topic to be both interesting and highly relatable to my own life nowadays. My "sister in-law" actually was pregnant during this pandemic and ended up giving birth quite recently, so I was constantly stressing about how Covid-19 might affect her in negative ways. I was particularly interested in seeing if respiratory complications occurred in newborns whose mother contracted Covid-19 towards the end of their pregnancies in that respiratory development occurs quite late in gestation. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the study you chose and found it gave me much more questions regarding the affects of covid-19 than I had when I started reading, but I'm very interested to see what further studies can conclude! Let's keep looking into this together and hopefully we can discuss more at a later date!