COVID infection while pregnant doesn’t appear to affect brain development in children Kids tested at 12, 18 and 24 months showed no difference between those who were and were not exposed to COVID in the womb However, an editorial argued it’s still too soon to tell WEDNESDAY, Oct. 23, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- New research offers some comfort to pregnant women who become ill with : Brain development doesn’t appear to be impaired in children exposed to the virus while in the womb. There’s no significant difference in development at one year, a year and a half and two years after birth between children whose moms had COVID while pregnant and those whose didn’t, researchers reported recently in the journal .
“These findings are critical considering the novelty of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the human species, the global scale of the initial COVID-19 outbreak, the now-endemic nature of the virus indicating ongoing relevance for pregnant individuals, the profound host immune response noted in many patients with COVID-19, and the accumulating evidence revealing sensitivity of the developing fetal brain to maternal immune activation,” concluded the research team led by , a reproductive endocrinologist with the University of California, San Francisco. For the study, researchers examined data on more than 2,000 new mothers and their children, as part of a study assessing the safety of pregnancy during the pandemic. The new moms were recruited between May 2020 and August 2021.
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