Overall, an infection with SARS-CoV-2 doubles the risk of expectant mothers from serious pregnancy complications. This is the result of a study by Kaiser Permanente health insurance in the US state of California. Among other things, a sharp increase in thrombosis and premature births were registered, as a team of authors has now reported in the journal “JAMA Internal Medicine”. This again underlines the importance of the Covid 19 vaccination for pregnant women.
The US health insurance has been known in the medical community for decades for its epidemiological investigations. Assiamira Ferrara and her co-authors compared data from 1,322 pregnant Covid-19 patients in the first year of the pandemic with 42,554 pregnant women with no infection confirmed by a PCR test. Although, according to the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, at the beginning of the pandemic in California, only around a third of pregnant women could be examined for SARS-CoV-2 due to a lack of available tests, the risk of severe infections was increased by a factor of 2.45 among those infected diseases.
The frequency of occurrence of thrombosis and embolism among those infected with SARS-CoV-2 was about three times as high, and during the period in which all pregnant women were finally examined, the frequency of thromboembolism was even more than six times as high. The frequency of premature births has doubled. “It is known that infection with SARS-CoV-2 is particularly dangerous for pregnant women. Of the 1,332 members of Kaiser Permanente in California who were found to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the first year of the pandemic, 76 had to (5.7 percent) were hospitalized, 28 (2.1 percent) developed respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and 12 (0.9 percent) developed sepsis,” the medical journal said, citing the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA).
The most important risk factor for the severe course of a SARS-CoV-2 infection, with a sevenfold increased risk, was diabetes that existed before pregnancy. Obese pregnant women were also more common among those affected by Covid-19 with a severe course of the disease (plus 50 percent), as well as pregnant women with high blood pressure (plus 44 percent) and older mothers-to-be (over 40 years/plus 77 percent).
None of this had a statistically significant effect on the newborns in terms of their condition after birth. However, the observation period was too short to take longer-term developmental disorders into account due to the increased number of premature births. “The study thus confirms previous experience, according to which SARS-CoV-2, unlike rubella and Zika viruses, does not directly damage the fetus. However, the higher number of premature births could have an unfavorable effect on the development of the children in the first years of life .
Vaccination against Covid-19 has been particularly recommended for pregnant women since the vaccine was available by specialists and expert committees. It should take place from the second trimester of pregnancy and then also protects the newborn with the antibodies originally from the mother.