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DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1736540
Fetal Complications in COVID-19 Infected Pregnant Woman: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Funding The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.![](https://www.thieme-connect.de/media/10.1055-s-00051312/202104/lookinside/thumbnails/10-1055-s-0041-1736540_210042-1.jpg)
Abstract
Background Pregnancy is an immunocompromised state and, for this reason, a pregnant woman is at a higher risk of getting infected as compared with a healthy individual. There is limited data available regarding the impact of COVD-19 on pregnancy; however, the case of miscarriage due to placental infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in second trimester has already been reported.
Methods We searched for all published articles in PubMed, Science Direct, Cochrane, Scopus, and Embase. The literature search produced 167 relevant publications; 67 manuscripts were further excluded because they did not satisfy our inclusion criteria. Out of the remaining 100 articles, 78 were excluded after full text screening. Therefore, a total of 22 articles were eligible for review in our study.
Results Overall, these 22 studies included a total of 7,034 participants: 2,689 (38.23%) SARS-CoV-2 positive pregnant women, of which 2,578 (95.87%) were laboratory confirmed and 111 (4.13%) were clinically diagnosed. Among the positive patients, there were 174 (6.47%) cases of abortion, of them 168 (96.55%) were spontaneous abortions and 6 (3.45%) were missed. Most patients either reported mild symptoms of fever, cough, fatigue, and anosmia or they presented asymptomatic.
Conclusion Additional investigation and rigorous research are warranted to confirm placental pathology mechanisms concerning COVID-19 to protect maternal and fetal health.
Publication History
Article published online:
15 November 2021
© 2021. Syrian American Medical Society. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
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