Baby boys get less protective antibodies from pregnant moms with COVID-19 compared to girls, new MGH study suggests

Pregnant women who get the coronavirus make fewer antibodies against the virus and transfer less immunity to their baby when having a boy compared to a girl, a new study out of Massachusetts General Hospital suggests.

“We definitely saw that male fetuses ended up with less protective antibodies from mom,” said Dr. Andrea Edlow, senior author of the study published in Science Translational Medicine and a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Edlow and her team looked at 68 pregnant women and 38 got the coronavirus during their third trimester before COVID-19 vaccines were available. They tested antibodies in the umbilical cord.

They found that the sex of the baby influenced the woman’s ability to make antibodies against the coronavirus and transfer them to the baby.

Mothers having a baby boy made fewer antibodies and transferred less protection to the baby compared with moms having a baby girl.

That’s because male placentas had higher levels of certain genes and proteins associated with increased immune activation. While the activation may help protect baby boys from being infected with the coronavirus, the inflammation can pose risks. That pattern was opposite in baby girls.

Studies have shown that male adults, kids and babies have a higher prevalence of the coronavirus and develop more severe disease than women. In addition, young boys are more likely to get multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a severe condition associated with COVID-19 in kids, than girls.

Edlow said the study may provide early insights into this vulnerability and shows that newborn boys up to six months of age might be more vulnerable to the coronavirus if their mother had the virus during pregnancy.

Overall, Edlow said it’s crucial that pregnant mothers get the coronavirus vaccine.

Babies born to vaccinated moms have more protection than babies born to moms who got the coronavirus during pregnancy, studies show.

“You can never be too careful because a baby is so small and vulnerable,” Edlow told the Herald.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3GH325J