Potential influence of COVID-19 and dexamethasone on the reproductive system: what we know and can expect

Abstract

Dexamethasone is the first and an important therapy that significantly reduces the risk of death in patients with severe COVID-19 disease. Nevertheless, a lot of studies have revealed that it has adverse impacts on multiple systems of the body especially the reproductive system, and dexamethasone exposure during the human foetal period may be associated with various diseases. In this paper, we reviewed the literature regarding the adverse effects of COVID-19 and dexamethasone administration on the reproductive system as well as related disease pathogenesis, in an attempt to clarify the potential harms of dexamethasone treatment in COVID-19 patients. Overall, we strongly support the application of dexamethasone as a pharmaceutical therapy in critical COVID-19 patients before a better therapy is developed, but the adverse side effects that may arise cannot be ignored. Our review will help medical professionals in the prognosis and follow-up of patients treated with dexamethasone. In addition, given that a considerable amount of uncertainty, confusion and even controversy that still remains, further studies and more clinical trials are urgently needed to improve the understanding of the parameters and the effects of dexamethasone on reproductive function of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• dexamethasone
• infertility
• pregnant women
• placenta

Ethical approval

This article is based on previously conducted studies and does not contain any new studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Authorship

All named authors meet the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship for this article, take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, and have given their approval for this version to be published.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the literature review for the manuscript. The first draft of the manuscript was written by F. C. and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province [Grant no. ZR2020QC100].