Two COVID-19 Clinical Trials Seek to Enroll Pregnant Women

Upon seeing pregnant women sick with COVID-19 at a University of Pennsylvania hospital, researchers there wrote trial protocols for blood transfusions to treat the disease that include expecting mothers.

Written byJef Akst

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As a translational infectious disease researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine who had led many clinical trials for experimental HIV therapies, Katharine Bar was acutely aware that pregnant women are rarely included in such research. Then, in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US, she witnessed several pregnant women suffering from severe symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection being admitted to the UPenn hospital system. As she and colleagues put together protocols for two trials to test infusing blood plasma from recovered patients, also called convalescent plasma, into sick patients as a treatment for COVID-19, Bar knew she wanted to include moms-to-be.

Bar and her colleagues officially launched the trials in May, running one for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and one specifically for COVID-19 patients on ventilators. While no expecting mothers have enrolled to date, their pregnancy would not ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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