Durham Reporter

Although monkeypox has been said to increase risks for the fetus if a person contracts it while pregnant, a Duke University doctor cautions that the sample size is too small to draw definitive conclusions.

“It is definitely not enough and so much of what you’re seeing here is not based on data or trials at all, and what we have done is develop an expert opinion based on prior experience with these five cases that are reported in the literature,” Dr. Breena Hughes, vice chair for obstetrics and quality at Duke University, said in a recent news report. 

She was responding after a monkeypox advisory was issued for pregnant women. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s message was that it’s unknown if being pregnant makes a person more susceptible to a monkeypox infection and that an infection is likely to create a higher-risk pregnancy. The society’s conclusions were made after examining five pregnancies in previous outbreaks. In those cases, two babies were spontaneously aborted, one resulted in a stillbirth, and one led to the premature birth of a neonate with congenital monkeypox infection and subsequent neonatal death.

Hughes said looking at only five pregnancies doesn’t give experts a full picture of the implications of monkeypox on pregnancy. Still, she advised people to take care since immune systems change during pregnancy, and any kind of infection is more dangerous for pregnant women.

“Proceeding with a bit of caution while we gather data and while we see the cases develop is most likely to be protective of people,” Hughes said. “If we find that’s actually pretty mild -- that would be great but we [would rather be] cautious at this point to ensure we’re protecting as much people as possible." 

Treatments and vaccines are currently available for pregnant women. 

“If there is a suspected monkeypox infection, collaborating with their public health authority, the obstetricians and the infectious disease specialists will be very important to ensure we can provide optimal care,” Hughes said. “Sometimes we see that more socially vulnerable women actually end up at highest risk for these types of infections because people are not prepared for them to have this kind of infection."