Clinical, Laboratory, and Obstetrics Features of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) during Pregnancy

Abstract

Background: The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains a new entity; the data on its clinical features, complications, and adverse outcomes during pregnancy are still to be identified and described. Several studies have reported a series of COVID-19 infections in pregnancy, the maternal and the neonatal outcome from different ethnicities and geographical regions. Materials and Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted in the obstetrics department of Mahdiyeh Hospital of Tehran, Iran, between February and April 2020. We included a series of 23 singleton pregnancies presenting to our department with fever and dry cough. All patients were tested for COVID-19 infection using nasopharyngeal swabs. Results: We included 23 singleton pregnant patients with a mean age of 28.1 ± 6.16 (ranging from 15 to 39) years and gestational age of 29.96±10.2 [ranging from 7 to 40] weeks. Of these patients, 7 (30.4%) tested positive for the SARS‑CoV‑2. Among the total patient population, 16 (69.5%) had elevated serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), 1 [4.3%] had lymphopenia, and 8 (34.7%) had elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Only 2 (8.7%) patients had positive findings of chest CT-scan. Most newborns had acceptable Apgar and birth weight, and only 4 (17.4%) required NICU admission. Conclusion: The clinical characteristics of the COVID-19 infection in pregnant patients were comparable to those of non-pregnant patients. We did not record a high frequency of lymphopenia and leukopenia, probably due to leukocytosis during pregnancy. CRP was a sensitive marker for COVID-19 pneumonia in pregnant patients.

Keywords

• novel coronavirus 2019 (covid-19), severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars‑cov‑2), pregnancy, features, obstetric outcome