COVID & Brain Development

 

Although the risks are low, COVID-19 occurring during pregnancy is associated with complications of pregnancy and poor birth outcomes, including:

• Increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness in pregnant women, making hospitalization, ICU care, and ventilator assistance are more likely

• Prematurity (delivery before 37 weeks gestation)

• Pregnancy loss and stillbirth

 

More than two years into the pandemic, researchers are just now beginning to see the impacts of maternal coronavirus infection during pregnancy on infant health. It will take several more years to determine if there are long-term impacts on growth, development, and overall pediatric health.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School worry that the effect of COVID-19 infection during pregnancy on infant brain development could mimic the impact seen with other viral infections acquired during pregnancy:

The potential relationship of maternal COVID-19 infection with offspring neurodevelopment, if any, is not yet understood. However, the profound immune activation observed in a subset of infected individuals suggests that the developing fetal brain may be influenced by maternal and placental inflammation and altered cytokine expression during key developmental windows. Regardless of mechanism, epidemiologic studies demonstrate that maternal infection in pregnancy, including other viral infections such as influenza, is associated with adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring, including autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, cerebral palsy, cognitive dysfunction, bipolar disorder, and anxiety and depression.

 

Indeed, the new research shows that infants whose mothers had COVID-19 during pregnancy had twice the risk of developing neurodevelopmental problems by the time they turned one year old, compared with infants who were not exposed in utero (ie. during gestation). Infections occurring in the third trimester were especially damaging, explains Megan Brooks:

In all, 14 of 222 children born to SARS-CoV-2-infected mothers (6.3%) were diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder in the first year of life vs 227 of 7550 unexposed offspring (3%).

The magnitude of the association with neurodevelopmental disorders was greater with third-trimester SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The majority of these diagnoses reflected developmental disorders of motor function or speech and language.

 

Even when mothers aren’t infected, carrying a child to delivery during a global pandemic can be highly stressful. In another study, researchers from the Developing Brain Institute at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. used fetal MRI scans to show changes in brain anatomy in developing fetuses. The changes in fetal brain development were attributed to “prolonged levels of stress and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Compared with infants born before the COVID-19 pandemic, those born during the pandemic had decreased fetal brain development, which researchers found was linked to higher levels of distress in women giving birth during the pandemic.

 

Data derived from Lu YC, et al. Commun Med (Lond). 2022;doi:10.1038/s43856-022-00111-w.

 

After 19 months of experience safely vaccinating adult women who were or later became pregnant, no evidence has surfaced suggesting a link between COVID-19 vaccines and neurodevelopmental problems in the offspring of immunized mothers. It’s another reason why obstetricians, family practitioners, and pediatricians urge women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant to talk to their providers and get vaccinated (and boosted when eligible) against this viral pathogen to reduce the risk to themselves, their babies, and their families.

 

(Google Images)

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2022/06/28/covid-brain-development/