Results of a study conducted by a large group of specialists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University School of Medicine (USA), published In the magazine JAMA Network Open.
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Researchers analyzed data on 127 women in their third trimester pregnancywho gave birth in Boston hospitals during the spring and early summer of 2020. In 64 of them, upon admission to childbirth, the PCR test for coronavirus infection was positive. In 23 women in labor, the disease was asymptomatic, in 22 symptoms were mild, in seven – moderate, in ten women COVID-19 was severe, and two were in critical condition.
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At the same time, regardless of the severity of the infection in the mother, in none of the cases the presence of the virus in the maternal blood, umbilical cord blood and placenta was detected, and none of the newborns became infected. Scientists suggested that the transmission of the virus to the fetus is blocked not only because the virus is absent in the mother’s blood (SARS-CoV-2 is usually detected only in secretions from the nasopharynx and in saliva), but also because cells on the surface of which are less common in the placenta ACE2 receptors are located, through which SARS-CoV-2 enters them.
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Most women who tested positive in their blood were found to have antibodies to viral proteins, but the level of these protective molecules in the umbilical cord blood was significantly lower than expected, regardless of the severity of COVID-19 in the mother and her health status.
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At the same time, as the researchers found, a lot of maternal antibodies to the virus pass through the placenta. flu, which are produced after vaccination of a pregnant woman. Scientists have suggested that maternal antibodies to coronavirus, for unclear reasons, cannot enter the placenta as easily as other maternal antibodies.
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how noted study lead author Andrea Edlow, since there is usually a peak in the transfer of maternal antibodies through the placenta to the fetus in the third trimester, the fact that this does not happen in the case of antibodies to coronavirus was very unexpected for her and her colleagues. Scientists plan to understand why this is happening, and whether the antibodies that the mother will develop after vaccination will behave the same way.
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