COVID may harm babies’ brain development if mom is infected while pregnant, study says

If someone tests positive for COVID-19 while pregnant, the infection may harm the baby’s brain development, a new study has found.

This new finding follows prior research that has shown a connection between viral infections, including the flu, when pregnant and “neurodevelopmental outcomes” in babies such as anxiety and depression, autism, bipolar disorder, cerebral palsy, cognitive dysfunction, and schizophrenia, researchers noted.

Babies exposed to COVID-19 in the womb, especially those in the third trimester phase of development, had a higher rate of brain development issues in the first 12 months after birth compared to unexposed babies, the study published June 9 in the journal JAMA Network Open concluded.

The study looked at 7,772 babies born between March and September 2020 at Massachusetts hospitals and involved researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Of these babies, 222 were born after their mothers tested positive for COVID-19.

Of the 7,550 babies who were not exposed to COVID-19 in the womb, 227 of them (3%) were diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorder, according to the study. By comparison, 14 (6.3%) of the 222 virus-exposed babies were diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Some of the most common neurodevelopmental diagnoses of these offspring were related to brain “disorders of motor function or speech and language,” researchers discovered after following up with them and looking at their health records.

The possible link between COVID-19 infection in mothers and brain development issues in their babies persisted even after researchers accounted for certain factors that could potentially increase this risk, including sex, preterm births, insurance status, race and more, the study noted.

“Although we identified greater risk of preterm delivery among SARS-CoV-2 positive mothers as in prior studies, adjustment for preterm birth did not account for all of the observed increased risk of incurring a neurodevelopmental diagnosis,” researchers wrote.

Authors acknowledged a separate study, published January in JAMA Pediatrics, that suggests that neurodevelopmental issues in babies born during the pandemic may result from mothers being pregnant amid “pandemic-associated stress.”

In a commentary on the more recent neurodevelopment study, Dr. Torri D. Metz, who specializes in maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Utah Health, wrote that “we wonder whether it is the virus itself or the societal changes and stresses of the pandemic that are adversely affecting childhood outcomes.”

“These preliminary data are critically important, yet many questions remain.”

Metz elaborated in the June 9 commentary that the data on babies exposed to COVID-19 in the womb involves those exposed to older COVID-19 variants, such as the alpha variant, early on in the pandemic.

The babies included in the June 9 study were examined long before the omicron variant, currently circulating in the U.S., first emerged.

Researchers noted how the study’s conclusions are “preliminary” due to “the limited duration of follow-up” in the babies studied.

“In particular, we cannot exclude the possibility that additional neurodevelopmental effects will become apparent later in life.”

The authors reiterated that follow-up research “will be critical in confirming the associations we identify” in regards to brain development issues in offspring of mothers who tested positive for COVID-19 during pregnancy.

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