Table 1.
Substances used for the vaccine injections in our cohort in relation to the occurrence of COVID-19 during pregnancy.
Table 2.
Obstetrical and neonatal characteristics in relation to vaccination and/or COVID-19.
Table 3.
Primary antibodies used for immunohistochemistry.
Fig 1.
Disease symptoms of COVID-19 affected women (n= 56; 14 non vaccinated, 42 vaccinated), predominantly symptoms common for respiratory virus infections.
Fig 2.
Relative distribution of disease symptoms of COVID-19 affected women between the different groups of non-vaccinated (n = 14) and vaccinated (n = 42) women.
By chi-square testing, only taste and odor disorders (F) differed significantly (p = 0.012) in that the non-vaccinated women reported this symptom more frequent.
Table 4.
Neonatal outcome in correlation to the COVID-19/vaccine status of the mother.
Fig 3.
Typical immunohistochemistry results on placental samples.
A: Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining and E: negative control immunohistochemistry was performed in all cases. Representative figures from the three placentas with positive nucleocapsid staining (B-D) and the corresponding spike protein positive findings (F‐H). In those samples, spike protein positivity was seen in syncytiotrophoblast (STB) cells predominantly, but also in Hofbauer cells (F, H; arrow) and endothelial cells (G; arrow. A + E: magnification x100 (bar represents 1 mm); all others: magnification x250 (bar represents 0,5 mm); counterstain HE, brown DAB+ indicates positive antibody binding. Black arrow points to intervillous stained cells, white head arrow to STB cells positive for nucleocapsid.
Fig 4.
Typical examples of immunohistochemical detection of spike protein positive cells at the main non‐STB cell types.
A + B: Hofbauer cells were seen positive for spike protein, C + D: trophoblast layer and E + F endothelial cells of villous vessels A, B, E, F: magnification x400 (bar represents 0,25 mm); C, D: magnification x250 (bar represents 0,5 mm). Counterstain HE.
Fig 5.
Double immunostaining with anti-spike (DAB, brown) and anti-CD68 (AP, red) antibodies.
The Hofbauer cell (white arrow), clearly stained with the anti-CD68 antibody, also showed positive anti-spike staining (white arrowhead), similar to the syncytiotrophoblast cells (black arrows). Sections were counterstained with HE; magnification ×400; scale bar = 250 µm.
Table 5.
Type of positive cells in the placental samples and number of individual tissues with positive detection.
Fig 6.
RNAscope in situ Hybridization with the sensors BNT162b2 (A), V-nCOV2019-S Wuhan (B &D) and S-encoding-mRNA-1273 (C).
A, B: Placental specimen of a woman vaccinated by Comirnaty before and during pregnancy and with COVID-19 in the 36th week of pregnancy. C, D: Placental specimen of a woman vaccinated by Spikevax before pregnancy. Circles = area of interest; arrows = positive stained cells.