No vertical transmission from women to newborns in third trimester: JAMA
No vertical- mother to baby transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, occurred in a study of 64 pregnant women with confirmed COVID, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
Pregnant women who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, during the third trimester are unlikely to pass the infection to their newborns, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study followed 127 pregnant women who were admitted to Boston hospitals during the spring of 2020. Among the 64 pregnant women who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, no newborns tested positive for the virus. NIH support was provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
"This study provides some reassurance that SARS-CoV-2 infections during the third trimester are unlikely to pass through the placenta to the fetus, but more research needs to be done to confirm this finding," said Diana W. Bianchi, M.D., NICHD Director.
The study, published was led by Andrea G. Edlow, M.D., M.Sc., of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
The researchers studied the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the third trimester of pregnancy, evaluating levels of virus in respiratory, blood and placental tissue samples, the development of maternal antibodies, how well those antibodies passed through the placenta to the fetus (an indicator of potential immune protection from the mother) and examined placental tissue. The results reported are limited to women in the third trimester because data on women infected during the first and second trimesters are still being collected and evaluated.
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