COVID-19 vaccines may help prevent placentitis, stillbirth in pregnancyCOVID-19 vaccination may protect pregnant women and their fetuses against virus-related placentitis (inflammation of the placenta) and stillbirth, concludes a review study published today in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
The research will also be presented next week at ID Week in Washington, DC.The study, led by a Perinatal Pathology Consulting researcher in Atlanta, reviewed nearly 100 articles on the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2–associated placentitis and stillbirth.Although placentitis can inhibit oxygen delivery to the fetus and lead to stillbirth or neonatal death, the vast majority of pregnancies in mothers infected with COVID-19 don't result in stillbirth, the team said.The development of SARS-CoV-2 placentitis is multifaceted, the researchers said, and probably involves both viral and immune-related factors that may differ by virus variant.
Unlike most intrauterine infections, which usually lead to stillbirth by directly damaging fetal organs, SARS-CoV-2 tissue damage appears limited to the placenta, the researchers said."Because the tissue pathology related to COVID-19 appears to be most prominent in the placenta, where it is highly destructive, it may be possible that effective vaccination of pregnant women can either decrease the severity or even inhibit the development of SARS-CoV-2 placentitis," the authors wrote. "Thus, maternal vaccination for COVID-19 may be live-saving for the fetus as well as the mother."In a news release from Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, lead author David Schwartz, MD, of Perinatal Pathology Consulting, noted that none of the mothers described in