Scientists in the United States have found that babies born during the first year of the pandemic performed slightly worse on developmental social and motor skills tests at the age of six months – regardless of whether their mothers had Covid-19 or not during pregnancy. them -compared to babies born before the pandemic.
The researchers, led by Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry Danny Dumitriou of the College of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center in New York, published their findings in the American Journal of Pediatrics. March and December 2020. Nearly half of mothers had Covid-19 at some point in their pregnancy, but most often with mild or no symptoms.
Scientists have known from previous experience that babies from mothers who become infected with the virus during pregnancy are generally at greater risk for neurodevelopmental disorders due to the activation of the maternal immune system, which in turn can adversely affect brain development. fetus. The question is whether something similar happens to pregnant mothers who have contracted coronavirus.
The new study found no differences in test performance between babies exposed to the coronavirus in the womb and those born to mothers who did not have Covid-19 infection. However, the average performance of babies born during the pandemic (regardless of whether their mother had previously been infected with the coronavirus) was lower than the average performance of 62 children born before the pandemic (the control group) in the same US hospitals.
“We were surprised to find absolutely no evidence that fetal exposure to Covid-19 while in the womb was not associated with neurodevelopmental deficits. On the other hand, babies in their mother’s womb during the pandemic performed slightly lower in areas such as social and motor skills. “These findings suggest that the enormous stress experienced by pregnant mothers during this unprecedented period of the pandemic may have played a role,” Dumitriou said.
“Although there were no large differences from baby to baby or even higher rates of actual developmental delay in our sample of a few hundred babies, even these small changes require great care because at a population level they can have a significant impact on public health, something we know also from other pandemics and natural disasters. “With millions of babies potentially exposed to Covid-19 in the womb, there is a vital need to understand the neurodevelopmental effects of the pandemic on future generations.”
He pointed out, however, that “we do not want parents to perceive the findings of our small study that necessarily mean that this generation of children will have problems later in life. It is still a very early developmental stage and there are then many opportunities for interventions, so that the babies return to the right developmental trajectory “.
Researchers believe that the mental stress of the pandemic experienced by pregnant mothers may explain why their babies often show a reduction in their social and motor skills on tests. Previous studies have shown that maternal stress in the early stages of pregnancy has a greater impact on infants than maternal stress in the later stages of pregnancy. The new study found something similar: Babies whose mothers were in the first trimester of pregnancy at the height of the pandemic performed lower on neurodevelopmental tests.
Aside from stress, other factors that may play a role are that pandemic babies probably had fewer opportunities and opportunities to interact and play with their stressed parents and other caregivers.
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