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Pregnant people respond to COVID-19 differently depending on the sex of their unborn child, according to a study released yesterday (October 19) in Science Translational Medicine. Male placentas produced more proinflammatory genes and proteins than female placentas after the parent contracted COVID-19, and people gestating sons produced fewer antibodies following infection. They also passed fewer protective antibodies on to the fetus.
“What’s interesting about that is it means that the sex of the baby can dictate how the mother responds to a viral infection,” Akiko Iwasaki, a virologist and immunologist at Yale University who was not involved in the study, tells STAT. “We knew that maternal infection can significantly impact the fetus, but this means that there is cross-talk between the fetus and the mother. That’s exciting because it adds an extra layer to what we are used to thinking about.”
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