Boston University researchers discover how placenta may block COVID-19 virus transmission to babies
New England Council member Boston University’s researchers have discovered how the placenta may be blocking virus transmission to babies during pregnancy. The new study may give scientists clues about blocking COVID infections in other patients.
The study, published in the American Journal of Pathology, involved collecting placentas from two groups of women who delivered at Boston Medical Center from July 2020 to April 2021. The first group was women who had normal pregnancies and no report of COVID infection. The second group of women were SARS-CoV-2 positive and had active COVID disease during their pregnancies. It showed that pregnant women who were infected with COVID had lower ACE-2 levels in their placentas compared to women with normal (COVID negative) pregnancies. The placenta has many similarities with the lung, so this study also highlights the importance of studying the placenta to help understand a variety of lung diseases.
“The placenta is one of the few ‘success stories’ of the pandemic,” said Elizabeth Taglauer, a neonatologist at Boston Medical Center. “If we understand how the placenta is naturally protecting babies from COVID-19, this may provide important information for therapies and strategies to help prevent other SARS-CoV-2 infections from continuing to spread.”
The New England Council commends Boston University for their hard work in researching how Covid-19 virus transmissions can be reduced.
Read more from the Boston Herald.