Assessment of glucose levels in pregnant women with history of COVID-19 in a case-control study

Cécile Monod; Grammata Kotzaeridi; Daniel Eppel; Tina Linder; Latife Bozkurt; Irene Hösli; Christian S Göbl; Andrea Tura

doi:10.3389/fphys.2022.988361

Assessment of glucose levels in pregnant women with history of COVID-19 in a case-control study

Front Physiol. 2022 Sep 16:13:988361. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.988361. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Cécile Monod^{1

2}, Grammata Kotzaeridi¹, Daniel Eppel¹, Tina Linder¹, Latife Bozkurt³, Irene Hösli², Christian S Göbl¹, Andrea Tura⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
² Department of Obstetrics, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
³ Department of Internal Medicine III, Clinic Hietzing, Vienna Health Care Group, Vienna, Austria.
⁴ CNR Institute of Neuroscience, Padova, Italy.

Abstract

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection may negatively affect glucose metabolism. This study aims to assess glucose levels, prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and perinatal outcome in women with history of COVID-19. To this purpose, a group of 65 patients with history of COVID-19 and 94 control patients were retrospectively recruited among pregnant women who attended the pregnancy outpatient department between 01/2020 and 02/2022. Glucose data from an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), GDM status and obstetric complications were assessed. We observed no differences in average (p = 0.37), fasting (p = 0.62) or post-load glucose concentrations (60 min: p = 0.19; 120 min: p = 0.95) during OGTT. A total of 15 (23.1%) women in the COVID-19 group and 18 (19.1%) women in the control group developed GDM (p = 0.55). Moreover, caesarean section rate, weight percentiles and pregnancy outcomes were comparable between the groups (p = 0.49). In conclusion, in this study we did not identify a possible impact of COVID-19 on glucose metabolism in pregnancy, especially with regard to glucose concentrations during the OGTT and prevalence of GDM.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; dysglycemia; gestational diabetes mellitus; oral glucose tolerance test; pregnancy.