Ohio State participates in NIH study to understand long-term outcomes in pregnant woman with COVID

There is never an ideal time to get COVID-19, especially for women who are pregnant. Research shows that women who had severe cases of COVID during pregnancy were at increased risk of perinatal complications, including cesarean birth, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and preterm birth. In addition, severe or critical maternal illness was associated with higher risk of neonates being admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit and having lower birth weight compared with neonates of asymptomatic patients.

To better understand the long-term effects of COVID-19 on pregnant women, Maged Costantine, MD, professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and director of the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, is participating in a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored research study to better understand the post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The work is part of the NIH’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, which is devoting more than $1 billion to fund research that seeks to understand, prevent and treat “long COVID” symptoms

“There is a lot we don’t know about the long-term implications of having COVID-19 during pregnancy,” says Constantine. 

Read more about the study and how researchers hope it will inform efforts to reduce the risk of long COVID (external link) after pregnancy and treat its symptoms.