Pregnancy and risk of vertical transmission in Covid-19

The current systematic review was planned to illustrate severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections during pregnancy and to explore pregnancy outcomes, vertical and perinatal transmission as well as management of coronavirus disease-2019 (Covid-19) during pregnancy.

The multidisciplinary systematic review was conducted at the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic Medicine, Al-Mustansiriyah University, Bagdad, Iraq. The literature search was conducted in September 2021 and included databases as Medline, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and Science Direct databases related to articles on pregnancy and SARS-CoV-2 infections, published between December 2019 and July 2021.

Of the 30 articles reviewed, 12(40%) were included. Major reasons for including a small number of studies in systematic review were that majority of the studies had insufficient description of study; analysis was duplicate across various publications, and inadequate explanation of impact of SARA-CoV-2 infection on the pregnancy outcomes. This review included 12 studies based on the assessment and estimation of risk of bias and quality of the eligible studies.

Findings revealed that pregnant women were predominantly susceptible to the respiratory viral infection and severe pneumonia due to physiological immune-suppression, immune adaptation and pregnancy-induced changes. The clinical presentation and management of pregnant women with Covid-19 is similar to that of non-pregnant women and there is no strong clinical evidence of vertical transmission. Also, only chloroquine and remdesivir have been found to be effective in the treatment of Covid-19 during pregnancy.