What is the reason for the rare transmission of corona infection from a pregnant mother to her fetus?
What is the reason for the rare transmission of corona infection from a pregnant mother to her fetus?
7/16/2020
A recent American study concluded that fetuses do not infected with the emerging corona virus except rarely, because the placenta produces weak quantities of receptors used by the virus to enter human cells.
And a study published in the journal "Nature" showed that a child born in France in March had contracted the virus during pregnancy, in the first case of its kind according to the doctors who followed the birth situation.
The child had neurological symptoms associated with Covid-19 in adults, but he recovered within three weeks.
In Italy, researchers studying the cases of thirty HIV-positive mothers found traces of Covid-19 in the placenta and umbilical cord and in the vagina of a mother and breast milk, without recording the birth of any child infected with the virus.
The new study, supervised by the National Institutes of Health, "NH" and the results of which were published by "E Life" magazine, depends on determining the sequence of genetic material drawn from the placenta, which is the organ that connects the child to the mother, and from the membranes containing the amniotic fluid.
These cells did not have genetic instructions to manufacture a receptor called "ACE2" present in the body and was recognized as the entrance of the Coruna virus, especially into the lungs and digestive system.
The main author of the study, Roberto Romero, said that the molecules needed to expose cells to infection with (Covid-19) virus are rarely found in the placenta.
These studies contribute to explaining the reason for the scarcity of transmission in a manner called "vertical", that is, from the mother to the child, which is approximately 2% of the total births in which the mother is infected with the virus.
The researchers pointed out that in the case of these children, the virus may use another entrance with non-ACE2 receptor molecules unknown until now.
