Some babies who experience a COVID-19 infection in utero face nearly double the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders, researchers say.
In a new study looking at electronic health records for 18,355 births since the start of the pandemic, researchers found a significant uptick in developmental issues among boys in their first year of life if their mothers tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — during pregnancy. No similar increase was seen in girls.
“The neurodevelopmental risk associated with maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection was disproportionately high in male infants, consistent with the known increased vulnerability of males in the face of prenatal adverse exposures,” said Dr. Andrea Edlow, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a co–lead author of the study published this month in the journal JAMA Network Open.