NIH’s https://www.nih.gov multi-pronged study is underway to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic during and after pregnancy. Researchers will analyze the medical records of up to 21,000 women.
The goal is evaluate whether changes to healthcare delivery implemented as a result of the pandemic, have led to higher rates of pregnancy-related complications and cesarean deliveries. They also want to establish how much of a risk it is for pregnant women with the COVID-19 infection to transmit the virus to their fetus.
Newborns will be monitored and assessed until they are discharged from the hospital. In addition, the study will track more than 1,500 pregnant women confirmed with COVID-19 infection by monitoring their health for six weeks after childbirth.
The study will be conducted by researchers in the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units (MFMU) Network which is a group of 12 U.S clinical centers funded by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) https://www.nichd.nih.gov
MFMU Network sites cover more than 160,000 deliveries a year to study their racial, ethnic, and geographic diversity. This allows researchers to generalize their study findings to the U.S. population. The Network investigators plan to contribute the data collected from the current study to a larger registry to help inform future studies of how COVID-19 affects maternal health and pregnancy.