Neonatal outcome among pregnant women with COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background

COVID-19 has raised many concerns about the possible side effects of pregnancy. There is currently no conclusive evidence of the vertical transmission of COVID-19. Accordingly, this paper is a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis investigated neonatal outcomes among pregnant women with COVID-19.

Methods

PubMed, Web of Science (WoS), EMBASE, ProQuest, Scopus, and Google Scholar were searched up to November 2020. The Cochran's Q-test and I² statistic were applied to assess heterogeneity, a random-effects model was used to estimate the pooled estimate of the mean, and a meta-regression method was utilized to investigate the factors affecting heterogeneity between studies.

Results

Of 1132 studies, 23 were included in the analysis (sample size: 749 for neonates and 820 for mothers). Most of these studies (n = 13) were conducted in China. The pooled estimate for the mean of birth weight, APGAR score in min 1 and 5 was 3084.97 g (95% CI: 2993.66–3176.29), 8.76 (95% CI: 8.27–9.25), and 9.44 (95% CI: 9.18–9.70), respectively. Also, the pooled prevalence of premature birth, shortness of breath, and neonatal death was 17.80% (95% CI: 12.47–23.13), 8.43% (95% CI: 4.50–12.37), and 7.73% (95% CI: 2.00–13.47), respectively. The meta-regression results indicated that the mother’s age, disease duration, and sample size had no significant effect on heterogeneity between studies (p-value all of them was >.05). Finally, 15 studies (65.22%) reported that vertical transmission did not occur.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 infection can have adverse outcomes for the newborn. Despite the positive test of neonates, the vertical transmission of COVID-19 from the infected mother to the fetus has not yet been conclusively proven; thus, further research is needed.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• neonatal outcome
• perinatal outcome
• pregnant women

Acknowledgments

We would like to sincerely thank the Jiroft University of Medical Sciences for their indispensable assistance.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

This study has a code of ethics No. IR.JMU.REC.1399.005 approved by Jiroft University of Medical Sciences.