'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
A recent study has found that pregnant people with COVID-19 can develop changes to their immune system that makes them susceptible to inflammation and pregnancy complications.
The study, led by researchers from Ohio and California, was published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine last month. The authors looked at 93 COVID-19 positive mothers and 45 of their infants.
The researchers analyzed more than 1,400 cytokines, which are proteins involved in immune activities, as well as other proteins collected from blood specimens. Blood specimens were taken from the mothers close to their initial diagnosis of COVID-19 as well as through their different stages of pregnancy and delivery. Blood specimens were also taken from the placentas.
“We know that pregnancy increases maternal risk for COVID-19, but relatively little is known about the long-term consequences of in utero exposure for infants,” study author Jae Jung said in a news release.
The researchers found that COVID-19 causes a dysregulated immune response, which leads to an immune system that can overreact or underreact when it's not supposed to.
“Our findings show that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy leads to distinct immune alterations in mothers and babies, highlighting how important it will be for long-term follow-up after pregnancy to catch and hopefully prevent any unforeseen long-term health conditions related to prenatal infection,” said Jung.
Stemming from this immune dysregulation, the pregnant women with severe COVID-19 were found to exhibit increased inflammation compared to participants who had mild symptoms of the disease. The women with severe COVID-19 also had higher levels of a protein called interferon lambda 1 (IFNL1), which may explain the low rate of transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the baby during pregnancy, also known as vertical transmission, the study states.
“This increase in interferon lambda signalling may help explain why we see relatively little direct transmission of COVID-19 between mother and baby during the period right before or after birth—what we call vertical transmission,” co-author Suan-Sin (Jolin) Foo said in the news release. "More research will be necessary to determine if increased expression of IFNL1 … does in fact block vertical transmission.”
The researchers also found that the pregnant women in the cohort exhibited dysregulated levels of proteins associated with pregnancy complications.
Most of the babies born to the COVID-19 positive mothers in the cohort were born healthy, but there were high rates of some pregnancy complications, such as including preeclampsia. Babies born to mothers with severe COVID-19 were more likely to have low birth weight, respiratory distress and were born preterm.
"Despite the lack of robust evidence for vertical transmission, SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy appears to trigger prenatal immune activation that may lead to adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes," the authors wrote, while stressing the importance of long-term clinical monitoring of infants born through COVID-19 pregnancies.
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.