ATLANTA — A new study may provide some much-needed reassurance for women who are pregnant during the pandemic.
The study, conducted by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine, found evidence that COVID-19 antibodies can indeed transfer from mom to baby.
"It's scary to be pregnant during the coronavirus pandemic," Dr. Martina Badell, an associate professor in the Department of Gynecology & Obstetrics, told 11Alive. "We started a protocol at Emory after the virus hit to study the immune response to COVID-19 infection in pregnancy."
According to Badell, researchers analyzed maternal and umbilical cord blood samples from 32 women who tested positive for COVID-19 during pregnancy.
"In our small study we were able to find that women were capable of mounting an antibody response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and that they did transfer antibodies to their baby via the cord blood," Badell said.
Badell said in cases where women were symptomatic, the antibody response was higher than in cases where women showed no symptoms.
While such evidence is ultimately encouraging, the transfer of such antibodies from mother to infant was less than researchers anticipated, according to Badell.
She said more research is also needed when it comes to determining if babies could have long term immunity.
"We do know that in other infections when we vaccinate moms during pregnancy and they transfer antibodies to their baby, that it does provide immunity to those infections so our hope it would be similar to the coronavirus," Badell said.
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