Pregnancy Could Help Reduce the Risk of Long COVID
A study found that patients who acquired a SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy had a lower risk of developing long COVID compared to those who were not pregnant.
Women who were pregnant when they became infected with COVID-19 had a relatively lower risk of developing long COVID compared to women who were not pregnant, according to new data published in Nature Communications.1 Authors of the study said the lower long COVID risk among pregnant women may be due to immune alterations during the postpartum period.
Pregnancy Could Help Reduce the Risk of Long COVID / tilialucida - stock.adobe.com
In the United States, an estimated 17 million adults live with long COVID, a number that has stayed relatively steady for the past year.2 According to a poll from KFF, 79% of adults with long COVID reported it limits their activity either a lot or a little. Despite the fact that 5% to 10% of adults in the country will likely continue to experience the condition at some point, research looking to improve its diagnosis and treatment continues to lag.
READ MORE: Maternal Deaths Due to Cardiovascular Disease Doubled in US Since 1999
“While SARS-CoV-2 infection acquired in pregnancy is associated with worse perinatal outcomes, infection during pregnancy has been described as protective against long COVID,” the authors wrote. “Prior studies have been conducted on relatively small pregnancy cohorts, limiting the generalizability of the results. Further, knowledge gaps still exist for patient counseling including further consideration of gestational age at the time of SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy and interval Long COVID risk, as well as the influence of pre-existing co-morbid health conditions.”
A team of investigators from Weill Cornell Medicine, the University of Rochester Medical Center, the University of Utah Health, and the Louisiana Public Health Institute conducted a study to estimate the risk of long COVID in individuals who acquired a SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy. Data for the study was gathered from National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Networks (PCORnet) and the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). The research was part of the National Institutes of Health Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery initiative.
The study cohort included 492325 and 1019180 reproductive-age females from PCORnet and N3C, respectively. All patients had had a documented SARS-CoV-2 infection between March 1, 2020, and October 31, 2022, with follow-up to June 1, 2023. Of those, 29975 and 42176 were pregnant when they acquired SARS-CoV-2 in the PCORnet and N3C cohorts, respectively. Each pregnant patient was matched for comparison with a patient who was not pregnant based on region, age, infection time, acute severity, and baseline comorbidities.
In the PCORnet cohort, the study found that the estimated risk of long COVID was 16.47 events per 100 persons in the pregnant group and 18.88 in the non-pregnant group at 180 days. In the N3C cohort, the estimated risk at 180 days was 4.37 events per 100 persons in the pregnant group and 6.21 in the non-pregnant group. Additionally, the data showed that self-reported Black patients, those with advanced maternal age, those infected during the first 2 trimesters, those infected during the Delta period, and those with chronic medical conditions had a higher risk of developing long COVID.
“This population is so important and vulnerable, but we had no evidence about their long COVID risk to guide their care,” Chengxi Zang, PhD, co-author on the study and an instructor in population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine, said in a release.3 “We hope this new data will help clinicians develop better long COVID prevention and treatment strategies for pregnant women and help those most at risk.”
READ MORE: Women's Health Resource Center
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