Pregnancy May Reduce Long COVID Risk | When women contracted SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy, they had a lower risk of developing long COVID compared with non-pregnant women who were exactly matched on region, age, infection time, acute severity, and baseline comorbidities.

[u/Potential_Being_7226]

https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2025/04/pregnancy-may-reduce-long-covid-risk

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[u/RussianCat26]

Pregnancy is also one of the riskiest health conditions for women nowadays considering 1/3 of them end in miscarriage and miscarriages/ abortions can end up in a jail sentence.

[u/Powerful_Put5667 → u/RussianCat26]

Sad but true.

[u/Cryzgnik → u/RussianCat26]

That's a social factor (yes, a very serious one) but that's not true. A pregnant woman in, for example, Australia who suffers from a miscarriage will not end up in jail because of that. Your statement implicitly assumes that all pregnancies occur in the US, which is not true.

[u/RussianCat26 → u/Cryzgnik]

The studies were done by these groups based in US of America: Weill Cornell Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, University of Utah Health and Louisiana Public Health Institute.

Also the data was collected by PCORnet and N3C which are US of A based as well.

So just to recap, all the data was collected from women in the USA and the studies were led by universities based in USA, therefore any conclusions that would include the United States of America are inherently more accurate.

In this case, yes all the pregnancies that we're talking about did occur in the US. Thanks for reading

[u/hanakage → u/RussianCat26]

“May” which means also “May not.” Not a strong case imo.

[u/SmartQuokka]

A similar effect has been noted for ME/CFS which may be related to Long Covid.

[u/Potential_Being_7226]

From the press release:

Pregnancy may offer some protection from developing Long COVID, found a new study led by Weill Cornell Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, University of Utah Health and Louisiana Public Health Institute. Previous research has mostly focused on non-pregnant adults affected by Long COVID—a condition lasting for months after a person recovers from a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The study, published April 1 in Nature Communications, helps fill a critical gap about Long COVID in women infected with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy. “This population is so important and vulnerable, but we had no evidence about their Long COVID risk to guide their care,” said Dr. Chengxi Zang, an instructor in population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine, who co-led the research. “We hope this new data will help clinicians develop better Long COVID prevention and treatment strategies for pregnant women and help those most at risk.”

Open access publication: 

Zang, C., Guth, D., Bruno, A.M. et al. Long COVID after SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy in the United States. Nat Commun 16, 3005 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57849-9 

[u/JustPoppinInKay]

Could have to do with how stemcells and the like from the fetus can cross the placental barrier and help with healing damage in the mother, but that's just my hypothesis

[u/Potential_Being_7226 → u/JustPoppinInKay]

There are widespread shifts in the function of the immune system during pregnancy; one major reason for this is so the body doesn’t reject the fetus as “non self” tissue. As an added outcome, some chronic diseases (particularly autoimmune diseases) also get better during pregnancy. Multiple sclerosis, for instance tends to improve during pregnancy (although this is temporary). 

Covid also yields excessive immune responses during illness. It’s possible that pregnancy dampens the immune response to covid which in turn reduces the risk for long covid.