Study: Pregnancy raises risk of COVID-19 complications
A study of more than 2,000 pregnant women from dozens of hospitals around the world has found that those with COVID-19 saw a significantly higher risk of death and of complications for themselves or their newborns.
The study, published Thursday in JAMA Pediatrics, underscores that pregnancy is a major risk factor for complications involving COVID-19 – one that should be considered alongside the likes of obesity and asthma – and could help persuade more women to line up for vaccinations.
The new report adds to a growing body of evidence “that will hopefully tip the scales towards more people getting vaccinated,” said Dr. Ilina Pluym, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UCLA who was not involved in the research.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put an additional burden on pregnant women: In addition to worrying about how they’d be affected by a coronavirus infection, they’re also anxious about the health of their babies.
This was particularly true at the beginning of the pandemic, when the uncertain extent of the risks “was affecting pregnant individuals’ mental health,” the study authors wrote. That’s in large part because there wasn’t much research available at the time comparing the outcomes for pregnant women with and without COVID-19.
Dr. Aris Papageorghiou, a fetal medicine specialist at Oxford University, and his colleagues were able to start tracking pregnant COVID-19 patients early in the pandemic by tapping into a network of hospitals involved in a large study tracking the health and development of normal pregnancies.
For eight months, they enrolled women age 18 or older at any stage of pregnancy or delivery who had been diagnosed with COVID-19. Every time they enrolled a new COVID-19 patient, they immediately enrolled two pregnant women without symptoms and who required the same level of care. If that wasn’t possible, they enrolled pregnant women who were not diagnosed with COVID-19 and delivered immediately after the COVID-19 patient did.
For pregnant women, “it really seems that COVID increases the likelihood of having an adverse outcome,” said Papageorghiou, the study’s senior author.
Fever and shortness of breath – common symptoms of COVID-19 – for any length of time were linked to a 2.56 times higher risk of severe complications for mothers and 4.97 times higher risk of complications for babies.
For pregnant women with coronavirus infections that did not cause COVID-19 symptoms, the picture was not nearly as grim: They had a 24% higher risk of illness and a 63% higher risk of preeclampsia.
Among the women with coronavirus infections, 13% of their newborns also tested positive for the virus. Women who had a cesarean delivery were more than twice as likely to have a newborn test positive. Breastfeeding, however, had no associated risk.
“This multinational study adds to that body of literature all showing increased maternal morbidity,” said Dr. Laura Riley, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine who was not involved in the study.
The findings underscore the fact that pregnancy is indeed a risk factor for severe COVID-19 and should be treated as such, Papageorghiou said.