Pregnant Women With COVID-19 Have Increased Risk for Complications

THURSDAY, Jan. 8, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Pregnant women hospitalized for COVID-19 experience differences in clinical care and medical treatment versus nonpregnant women and are more likely to experience complications, according to a study recently published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.Alina R. Bardwell, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues prospectively examined outcomes of pregnant patients aged 18 years and older hospitalized for COVID-19 in the Michigan Medicine COVID-19 Cohort.The researchers found that the composite outcome of in-hospital death and use of mechanical or nonmechanical respiratory support was exhibited by 33 percent of 54 pregnant patients hospitalized for COVID-19 and 17 percent of 216 matched nonpregnant women. Similar in-hospital mortality was seen between both groups, occurring in 4 and 3 percent of pregnant and nonpregnant women, respectively. Compared with nonpregnant women, pregnant women had a higher likelihood of requiring respiratory support (odds ratio, 3.42), driven by increased use of nonmechanical ventilation (19 versus 5 percent of women). The composite outcome was experienced by pregnant women in the third trimester more often than by those hospitalized for COVID-19 earlier in pregnancy (>27 weeks versus ≤27 weeks; 45 versus 24 percent). Of the eight pregnant women requiring mechanical ventilation, one and seven were vaccinated and unvaccinated, respectively. Of the 16 women who delivered during their COVID-19 hospitalization, 75 percent of the deliveries required cesarean section, 69 percent were delivered preterm, and 44 percent required neonatal intensive care unit admission immediately following birth."Care teams were more likely to provide respiratory support to pregnant patients, likely because the threshold for intervention is lower when you are fighting for two lives," coauthor Salim S. Hayek, M.D., also from the University of Michigan, said in a statement.Abstract/Full Text.Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter