Just over four years since Covid emerged, it has become increasingly clear that infections in pregnant mothers can lead to serious health risks in infants.
The latest finding: Babies born to mothers who had Covid during pregnancy had "unusually high rates" of respiratory distress at birth or shortly thereafter, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.
The authors defined respiratory distress as having at least two out of four symptoms: a slow breathing rate, pale or bluish skin, flaring nostrils or a retraction of the chest with each breath.
The study enrolled 221 pregnant women with Covid — mostly Black or Hispanic women in Los Angeles. None of the nearly 200 babies studied, who were born between April 2020 and August 2022, tested positive for Covid at birth. Around 17% were diagnosed with respiratory distress — higher than the average among newborns, which estimates put around 5% to 7%.
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"The average duration of a hospital stay for these infants was about 24 days. They were quite sick," said Dr. Olivia Man, the lead author of the study.
Other effects of Covid during pregnancy, according to prior research, include an increased risk of severe illness and death for the mother, preterm birth, stillbirth and neurodevelopmental issues in the first year of a child’s life.
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