A research from the Center for Quantitative Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA, has concluded that babies exposed to covid-19 in utero have a higher risk of suffering neurodevelopmental problems, especially if the infection occurs in the last trimester of pregnancy, and this may last until the end of the first year of life.

According to the scientists, damage to the nervous system is twice as common in the first year of life after exposure to the virus during pregnancy.

The investigation, published in JAMA scientific journal, examined the electronic medical records of more than 7,500 patients in six hospitals, revealing that among children exposed to covid-19 in the womb, the likelihood of developmental delay - both speech and motor - was 80 to 90% higher than for a child born without contact with the virus.

The researchers caution, however, that the identified delays may attenuate as the child grows, or may be addressed through early interventions.

However, the study expresses concern about the high risk rate in children exposed to the virus. "This is something we need to pay attention to," said Roy Perlis, coauthor of the study, noting that the findings surprised the team.

"My thinking was, we need to work hard to see if there is any way to make this data go away," Roy Perlis said, stressing that every measure was taken to make sure "that they didn't have a false positive effect."

However, the association between covid in pregnancy and neurological damage remained even after the researchers accounted for a number of other factors, including maternal age, ethnicity, and the type of insurance (which is seen as a proxy for income).

The team also found that the risk was above for preterm births, which can also increase the likelihood of delays.

Many of the developmental delays that were noted in the study were not specific. For example, assures the research, a pediatrician might notice that a child "is not reaching the age he or she would be expected to reach, or not babbling at the age he or she would be expected to babble." And, Roy Perlis stresses, the delays may not have long-term consequences.

"In many cases, these are diagnoses that resolve with age. So it may very well be that when we go back and look at these children after 18 months or two years, they have already recovered," he safeguards. "But we wanted to establish a method to study this group, so that if there are problems later on, we can detect them as early as possible."