Jan. 31 (UPI) —<\/span> The reason few pregnant women pass COVID-19 to their newborns, despite experiencing serious complications themselves, may reside in the placenta, a study published Monday by the American Journal of Pathology found.<\/p>\n Placentas collected from 16 pregnant people diagnosed with COVID-19 in their second or third trimesters contained lower levels of an enzyme called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, or ACE-2, than those without the virus, the data showed.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n ACE-2 allows the virus that causes COVID-19 to enter human cells and spread throughout the body, the researchers said.<\/p>\n “We think that when a woman has COVID-19 in pregnancy, the placenta is shedding off ACE-2 as a way to block [the virus] from being passed to the fetus,” study co-author Dr. Elizabeth S. Taglauer said in a press release.\n<\/p>\n “This may provide important information for therapies and strategies to help prevent other … infections from continuing to spread,” said Taglauer, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.<\/p>\n Research has indicated that pregnant people with COVID-19 are at higher risk for birth complications, including preterm delivery.<\/p>\n However, the risk for their passing the virus to their newborns is low, studies suggest.\n<\/p>\n For this study, Taglauer and her colleagues collected placentas from two groups of people who delivered babies at Boston Medical Center between July 2020 and April 2021.<\/p>\n The first group had normal pregnancies and no confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, while the second tested positive and had active disease during the second or third trimesters, the researchers said.<\/p>\n The researchers evaluated the presence of ACE-2 in placental tissue using a microscope, they said.\n<\/p>\n Given that the placenta has many similarities with the lungs, in terms of tissue structure, the findings could help better understand how COVID-19 enters cells and identify ways to prevent infections by controlling ACE-2 levels, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n Understanding “how the placenta [may be] naturally protecting babies from COVID-19” could be important, Taglauer said.<\/p>\n “The placenta is one of the few ‘success stories’ of the pandemic,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Levels of an enzyme in the placenta may explain why pregnant people with COVID-19 rarely pass the virus to their newborns. File photo by Molly Riley\/UPI | License Photo Jan. 31 (UPI) — The reason few pregnant women pass COVID-19 to their newborns, despite experiencing serious complications themselves, may reside in the placenta, a study […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":774465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[3818,947,261,3819,2784,28,3820],"class_list":["post-774464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-babies","tag-block","tag-covid19","tag-placenta","tag-pregnancy","tag-study","tag-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ![\"Study:](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Study-Placenta-may-block-COVID-19-transmission-to-babies-during-pregnancy.jpg\" "\\"Study:")
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\nLevels of an enzyme in the placenta may explain why pregnant people with COVID-19 rarely pass the virus to their newborns. File photo by Molly Riley\/UPI | License Photo<\/div>\n\n