Coronavirus and birth in Italy: results of a national population-based cohort study

  1. Alice Maraschini
  2. Edoardo Corsi
  3. Michele Antonio Salvatore
  4. Serena Donati
  5. ItOSS COVID-19 working group

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Abstract

Introduction

The study was implemented to provide guidance to decision-makers and clinicians by describing hospital care offered to women who gave birth with confirmed COVID-19 infection.

Materials and methods

National population-based prospective cohort study involving all women with confirmed COVID-19 who gave birth between February 25 and April 22, 2020 in any Italian hospital.

Results

The incidence rate of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in women who gave birth was 2.1 per 1000 maternities at a national level and 6.9/1000 in the Lombardy Region. Overall one third of the women developed a pneumonia and 49.7% assumed at least one drug. Caesarean section rate was 32.9%, no mothers nor newborns died. Six percent of the infants tested positive for SARS – CoV-2 at birth.

Conclusions

Clinical features and outcomes of COVID-19 in women who gave birth are similar to those described for the general population, most women developing mild to moderate illness.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.11.20128652: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Informed consent to the participation is acquired from any woman at study enrolment.
    IRB: The Ethics Committee of the Italian National Institute of Health approved the project (Prot. 0010482 CE 01.00, Rome 24/03/2020).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power AnalysisSince this is an observational study, the cohort size depends on the incidence of the disease; therefore, a formal power calculation has not been performed.
    Sex as a biological variableThe ItOSS national population-based cohort study collects information on all women who gave birth in any Italian hospital with a SARS-CoV-2 infection confirmed during pregnancy.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations include the analysis of preliminary data while the pandemic is still underway and the constraints linked to the impossibility of generalizing the results without taking into account the different prevalence of the condition by geographical area. The lack of information regarding women infected in the early stages of pregnancy is also a limit of the study, but the ItOSS will follow-up affected women currently in the first trimester of pregnancy.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.11.20128652v1 on medRxiv