New Coronavirus and Pregnancy: Risks for Mother and Fetus

- namely the new coronavirus responsible for the infection known as COVID-19 - has raised considerable concern even among pregnant women.

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After all, it could only be like this: pregnancy involves a reduction in the woman's immune defenses (as these also undertake to protect the fetus) and a consequent greater susceptibility to infections; moreover, it is known that, if contracted during gestation, certain viral infectious diseases, but not only, can be transmitted from the mother to the fetus and have very serious, sometimes even fatal consequences on the latter (in this regard, think of cytomegalovirus, rubella, toxoplasmosis, hepatitis B etc.).

This article aims to report the observations and data collected so far regarding the effects of COVID-19 during pregnancy, both for the mother and for the fetus.
It should be noted that this is preliminary evidence, relating to the first months of the spread of SARS-CoV-2; for greater certainty, further studies on a wider time scale will be needed.
Only time, therefore, will be able to clarify whether what has emerged so far regarding the consequences of COVID-19 in pregnancy is actually true or not.

The content of this article is based on information published on the official website of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and in an article of College of American Pathologists, present on Pubmed.

, gestational diabetes, etc.), the "SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection has more serious consequences than those observed in most healthy adults; the data collected so far, in fact, have shown that pregnant women with COVID- 19 tend to develop mild symptoms (including mostly fever, cold, and dry cough) and to overcome infection, just like most healthy adults do.

These first evidences, therefore, suggest that, for pregnant women, the risk of pneumonia and respiratory failure related to COVID-19 is equal to that of a healthy adult subject.

In light of what has been said so far, it is worth remembering that, data in hand, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection is particularly dangerous for the elderly, individuals with immunosuppression, diabetics and people with heart or lung disease. chronic type.