Pregnant Women Excluded From Three-Quarters Of COVID-19 Treatment Trials
A mother and her new born baby at Karenga Health Center IV.

Three-quarters of COVID-19 trials reviewed specifically excluded pregnant women, despite investigating medications that are already used by expectant mothers.

Authors of an opinion piece published in The Lancet Global Health journal, based on a data review, warned that although pregnant women are among those most in need of effective and safe therapies, they are routinely excluded from the majority of clinical treatment trials.

Ongoing exclusion will actively lose opportunities to investigate and ensure the safety of treatments in pregnant women who may be at extreme risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19, they said.

The full opinion piece can be read here.

Image Credits: UNICEF/Zahara Abdul 2019.

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