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Covid Raises Mothers’ Risk of Intensive Care Admission in Study

Covid Raises Mothers’ Risk of Intensive Care Admission in Study

Mothers-to-be with Covid-19 may be at increased risk of intensive care admission, breathing problems that require the use of a ventilator and giving birth early, researchers said.

Babies born to mothers with the pandemic virus were also at higher risk of needing intensive care, with a quarter admitted to the neonatal unit, according to an analysis that was published in the BMJ medical journal and partly funded by the World Health Organization. However, still birth and newborn death rates were low among these babies, the researchers found.

The researchers analyzed 77 studies that included 11,432 hospitalized pregnant and recently pregnant women with suspected or confirmed coronavirus infections. The analysis adjusted for various designs and differing levels of quality in the studies from the U.S., China, Italy, Brazil and other countries, the journal said.

About one in 10 pregnant or recently pregnant women who were admitted to a hospital for any reason were diagnosed or suspected to have Covid-19, the researchers found, although rates varied from study to study. These patients were less likely to report symptoms of fever and muscle pain than non-pregnant women with the disease, according to researchers led by Shakila Thangaratinam of the WHO Collaborating Center for Global Women’s Health and the U.K.’s University of Birmingham.

Older mothers and those with underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and being overweight were most likely to have severe cases of Covid-19, they said.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.