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‘Still births after rare infection by corona’

In rare cases, the unborn baby can be in danger of life in pregnant women who contract corona. That writes de Volkskrant, who spoke with gynecologist Sam Schoenmakers of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam. Since July this year, at least thirteen stillbirths have been reported as a result of a placenta damaged by the corona virus.

Schoenmakers and his colleagues conducted an analysis of stillbirths for which no explanation was initially found.

At the beginning of this year, they examined the placentas of 36 women who contracted corona during the first wave. Five placentas were full of inflammatory cells and damaged, the newspaper writes. This disrupted the supply of nutrients and oxygen from mother to child. The virus was found in four of the five placentas.

As a result of this discovery, they looked at placentas with these abnormalities in unexplained and unexpected stillbirths in the Randstad. “Since July this year, they have been able to assign all thirteen examined stillbirths of babies born to women without serious symptoms to corona-damaged placentas,” de Volkskrant writes.

Schoenmakers calls that an incredible amount. “There is no other infectious disease that causes so much death in unborn babies in such a short period of time in our region.”

Need more research

The pregnant women often only had minor complaints due to the coronavirus, such as a runny nose. Some didn’t even know they had corona; it was then detected with an antibody test.

Schoenmakers emphasizes in the newspaper that more research is needed. “It now appears that when the coronavirus enters the bloodstream from the lungs, an infection in the placenta can occur.”

The Dutch Association for Obstetrics and Gynecology (NVOG) says in a response to advise all pregnant women to be vaccinated.

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