20220209
apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-health-2a...
Coronavirus can destroy the placenta and lead to stillbirths
New research suggests the coronavirus can invade and destroy the placenta and lead to stillbirths in infected women.
It’s an uncommon outcome for any pregnancy but women with COVID-19 face an elevated risk. Authorities believe vaccination can help prevent these cases.
Researchers in 12 countries, including the United States, analyzed placental and autopsy tissue from 64 stillbirths and four newborns who died shortly after birth. The cases all involved unvaccinated women who had COVID-19 during their pregnancy.
The study bolsters evidence from small case reports and it confirms that placenta damage rather than an infection of the fetus is the likely cause of many COVID-19-related stillbirths, said Dr. Jeffery Goldstein, a pathologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
He was not involved in the study, which was published Thursday in Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.
Previous evidence suggests the chances of stillbirth are higher than usual for pregnant women with COVID-19, particularly from the delta variant. Vaccination recommendations include pregnant women and note their higher risk for complications when infected.
Lead author Dr. David Schwartz, an Atlanta pathologist, said other infections can infiltrate the placenta and cause stillbirth, typically by infecting and damaging the fetus. A recent example is Zika virus.
He and his colleagues wanted to see if that was the case with stillbirths in women with COVID-19. But what they found was almost the opposite: it was the placenta that was infected and extensively destroyed.
“Many of these cases had over 90% of the placenta destroyed — very scary,” said Schwartz.
Normal placenta tissue is a healthy reddish hue and spongy. The specimens they studied were stiff, with dark discolorations of dead tissue. While other infections can sometimes damage the placenta, Schwartz said he’d never seen them cause such consistent, extensive destruction.
The placenta is an organ that forms and attaches to the womb during pregnancy. It connects with the umbilical cord, providing oxygen and nourishment from the mother’s bloodstream.
The virus likely reached the placenta through the bloodstream, attaching to susceptible cells and causing protein deposits and an unusual form of inflammation that blocked blood flow and oxygen. That in turn led to placenta tissue death and suffocation, the researchers said.
Coronavirus was also detected in some of the fetuses, but evidence of suffocation in the womb points to placenta damage as the more likely cause of death, they said.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in November found that among pregnant U.S. women infected with COVID-19, about 1 in 80 deliveries was a stillbirth — the loss of a fetus anytime after 20 weeks. That’s compared with 1 in 155 among uninfected women.
The study stillbirths occurred on average at 30 weeks; normal pregnancies last about 40 weeks.
High blood pressure, certain chronic illnesses and fetal abnormalities are among conditions that can increase chances for stillbirths, including in women with COVID-19.
It is unclear whether omicron infections also increase chances for stillbirths; the study was done before that highly infectious variant emerged.
www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/cure-for-long-covi...
Common Over-The-Counter Drug May Relieve Long COVID Symptoms, Case Report Suggests
Promising news for people with long COVID may have arrived in a new case report, as two people report that their symptoms were almost completely relieved by taking common over-the-counter antihistamines. Authors of the new paper express that while the evidence thus far is anecdotal and based on a very small sample size, it’s a worthy avenue of investigation considering that – for most people – antihistamines are safe to take on a daily basis.
“Patients tell us they wish more than anything that they could work and do the most basic activities they used to before they got sick with long COVID,” said corresponding author and University of California, Irvine associate professor of nursing, Melissa Pinto, in a statement. “They are desperately searching for something to help them get back on their feet.”
That search led Pinto and colleagues to the cases of two women, details of which they describe in a paper published in The Journal for Nurse Practitioners. Both women were otherwise healthy and ended up taking the antihistamine diphenhydramine, sometimes branded as Benadryl or Nytol, as something of a happy accident.
In the first case, the woman had triggered an existing lactose intolerance by eating cheese so took the antihistamine to manage the subsequent symptoms. The second had run out of her usual allergy medication so switched.
In both instances, the women found daily doses of the antihistamine led to significantly improved quality of life. Their cognition, exercise tolerance, and pain severity – all of which had worsened after SARS-CoV-2 infection – were improved and rashes and lesions associated with long COVID (which has around 203 possible symptoms) went away.
Each woman reports they’ve regained 90 and 95 percent of their pre-illness function under the diphenhydramine antihistamine regime. Their promising outcome potentially demonstrates that this readily available medication could have a big impact on those who feel they have lost much of their quality of life to long COVID.
“Currently, there is no cure for [long COVID], only symptom management,” said Pinto. “A number of options are being tried, with antihistamines being one of them.”
While the women represent a small sample size, with similar characteristics including age, sex, and ethnicity, Pinto maintains that the promise of an afforable medication easing long COVID symptoms is worth further investigation.
“The possibility that an easy-to-access, over-the-counter medication could ease some of the [long COVID] symptoms should offer hope to the estimated 54 million people worldwide who have been in distress for months or even years,” she continued. "The next steps for this research into antihistamine treatment are to conduct broad-based trials in order to evaluate efficacy and to develop dosage schedules for clinical practice guidelines.”
20220209
apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-health-2a...
Coronavirus can destroy the placenta and lead to stillbirths
New research suggests the coronavirus can invade and destroy the placenta and lead to stillbirths in infected women.
It’s an uncommon outcome for any pregnancy but women with COVID-19 face an elevated risk. Authorities believe vaccination can help prevent these cases.
Researchers in 12 countries, including the United States, analyzed placental and autopsy tissue from 64 stillbirths and four newborns who died shortly after birth. The cases all involved unvaccinated women who had COVID-19 during their pregnancy.
The study bolsters evidence from small case reports and it confirms that placenta damage rather than an infection of the fetus is the likely cause of many COVID-19-related stillbirths, said Dr. Jeffery Goldstein, a pathologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
He was not involved in the study, which was published Thursday in Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.
Previous evidence suggests the chances of stillbirth are higher than usual for pregnant women with COVID-19, particularly from the delta variant. Vaccination recommendations include pregnant women and note their higher risk for complications when infected.
Lead author Dr. David Schwartz, an Atlanta pathologist, said other infections can infiltrate the placenta and cause stillbirth, typically by infecting and damaging the fetus. A recent example is Zika virus.
He and his colleagues wanted to see if that was the case with stillbirths in women with COVID-19. But what they found was almost the opposite: it was the placenta that was infected and extensively destroyed.
“Many of these cases had over 90% of the placenta destroyed — very scary,” said Schwartz.
Normal placenta tissue is a healthy reddish hue and spongy. The specimens they studied were stiff, with dark discolorations of dead tissue. While other infections can sometimes damage the placenta, Schwartz said he’d never seen them cause such consistent, extensive destruction.
The placenta is an organ that forms and attaches to the womb during pregnancy. It connects with the umbilical cord, providing oxygen and nourishment from the mother’s bloodstream.
The virus likely reached the placenta through the bloodstream, attaching to susceptible cells and causing protein deposits and an unusual form of inflammation that blocked blood flow and oxygen. That in turn led to placenta tissue death and suffocation, the researchers said.
Coronavirus was also detected in some of the fetuses, but evidence of suffocation in the womb points to placenta damage as the more likely cause of death, they said.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in November found that among pregnant U.S. women infected with COVID-19, about 1 in 80 deliveries was a stillbirth — the loss of a fetus anytime after 20 weeks. That’s compared with 1 in 155 among uninfected women.
The study stillbirths occurred on average at 30 weeks; normal pregnancies last about 40 weeks.
High blood pressure, certain chronic illnesses and fetal abnormalities are among conditions that can increase chances for stillbirths, including in women with COVID-19.
It is unclear whether omicron infections also increase chances for stillbirths; the study was done before that highly infectious variant emerged.
www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/cure-for-long-covi...
Common Over-The-Counter Drug May Relieve Long COVID Symptoms, Case Report Suggests
Promising news for people with long COVID may have arrived in a new case report, as two people report that their symptoms were almost completely relieved by taking common over-the-counter antihistamines. Authors of the new paper express that while the evidence thus far is anecdotal and based on a very small sample size, it’s a worthy avenue of investigation considering that – for most people – antihistamines are safe to take on a daily basis.
“Patients tell us they wish more than anything that they could work and do the most basic activities they used to before they got sick with long COVID,” said corresponding author and University of California, Irvine associate professor of nursing, Melissa Pinto, in a statement. “They are desperately searching for something to help them get back on their feet.”
That search led Pinto and colleagues to the cases of two women, details of which they describe in a paper published in The Journal for Nurse Practitioners. Both women were otherwise healthy and ended up taking the antihistamine diphenhydramine, sometimes branded as Benadryl or Nytol, as something of a happy accident.
In the first case, the woman had triggered an existing lactose intolerance by eating cheese so took the antihistamine to manage the subsequent symptoms. The second had run out of her usual allergy medication so switched.
In both instances, the women found daily doses of the antihistamine led to significantly improved quality of life. Their cognition, exercise tolerance, and pain severity – all of which had worsened after SARS-CoV-2 infection – were improved and rashes and lesions associated with long COVID (which has around 203 possible symptoms) went away.
Each woman reports they’ve regained 90 and 95 percent of their pre-illness function under the diphenhydramine antihistamine regime. Their promising outcome potentially demonstrates that this readily available medication could have a big impact on those who feel they have lost much of their quality of life to long COVID.
“Currently, there is no cure for [long COVID], only symptom management,” said Pinto. “A number of options are being tried, with antihistamines being one of them.”
While the women represent a small sample size, with similar characteristics including age, sex, and ethnicity, Pinto maintains that the promise of an afforable medication easing long COVID symptoms is worth further investigation.
“The possibility that an easy-to-access, over-the-counter medication could ease some of the [long COVID] symptoms should offer hope to the estimated 54 million people worldwide who have been in distress for months or even years,” she continued. "The next steps for this research into antihistamine treatment are to conduct broad-based trials in order to evaluate efficacy and to develop dosage schedules for clinical practice guidelines.”