Pregnant women may have a lower chance of developing long COVID, according to a new study published on April 1 in Nature Communications.
The research was led by scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, University of Utah Health, and Louisiana Public Health Institute.
Long COVID is a condition where people continue to have symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, breathing problems, or joint pain for months after recovering from COVID-19.
Most previous studies looked at people who weren’t pregnant, so this new research helps fill a big gap in understanding how COVID affects pregnant women in the long term.
“We had no clear evidence about long COVID risks in pregnant women, even though they’re a vulnerable group,” said Dr. Chengxi Zang from Weill Cornell Medicine, one of the lead researchers.
“We hope our findings help doctors better prevent and treat long COVID in pregnancy.”
The team used two large national health databases — PCORnet and N3C — which are part of a federal research effort called RECOVER. They studied the health records of about 72,000 women who had COVID-19 during pregnancy, and compared them with around 208,000 women who were the same age and background but were not pregnant when they got COVID.
The researchers checked to see how many women developed long COVID symptoms 180 days after recovering. They found that about 16 out of 100 pregnant women developed long COVID, compared to about 19 out of 100 non-pregnant women. This pattern was seen in both databases, which makes the results more trustworthy.
Even though pregnant women still face risks, the chance of long COVID was lower for them than for non-pregnant women.
Some pregnant women had higher long COVID risks than others. Women who were over 35, had obesity or other metabolic conditions, or identified as Black were more likely to develop long COVID. However, their risk was still lower than similar non-pregnant women.
The researchers believe that changes in the immune system during and shortly after pregnancy might help protect women from long COVID. They say more studies are needed to learn how different stages of pregnancy affect long COVID risk and how to better support women at higher risk.
Dr. Zang and his team are also looking into whether any existing medications could be used to help prevent long COVID in pregnant women.
This study gives doctors and patients new insights and opens the door to better care for pregnant women recovering from COVID-19.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to severe COVID-19, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.
For more health information, please see recent studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
