A case report describing severe COVID‐19 and treatment strategy in a pregnant patient who delivered vaginally at 34 weeks.

Aim To evaluate perinatal outcomes regarding clinical presentation in pregnancy and the vertical transmission potential of COVID‐19. Methods Clinical records, laboratory findings, and chest computed tomography (CT) scans were retrospectively reviewed from 20 pregnant patients with laboratory‐confirmed COVID‐19 who were admitted to Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University and The Third Hospital of Wuhan, from Jan 20 to Mar 16, 2020, including three in the first‐trimester, two in the second‐trimester, and 15 in the third‐trimester. Evidence of vertical transmission was assessed by testing for neonatal throat swab samples. The pathological changes of COVID‐19 on the placenta is evaluated by hematoxylin‐eosin staining. Results The most common symptoms of the pregnant women with SARS‐CoV‐2 infection were fever and cough, which is comparable to the nonpregnant adults with COVID‐19 infection. Nobody was transferred to intensive care unit (ICU) for treatment and there were no maternal and neonatal deaths. However, there was one case with induced abortions on first‐trimester (due to pregnant woman's concerns about COVID‐19), one diagnosed with ectopic pregnancy, no intrauterine fetal deaths during the study period. Delivery occurred in 15 patients in the third trimester. Their incidence of preterm birth was 20%. Three of the four preterm births were spontaneous. The average length of stay was 20.77 days. No neonatal SARS‐CoV‐2 infection was detected. There were two placentas found with acute chorioamnionitis, one showed normal placenta morphology. Conclusion In this case series study, COVID‐19 had no short‐term adverse effect on pregnant women except premature birth. The vertical transmission of SARS‐CoV‐2 did not occur in our study.

Human bocavirus (HBoV) is a member of the genus Bocavirus, family Parvoviridae, and subfamily Parvovirus and was first identified in nasopharyngeal aspirates of Swedish children with acute respiratory tract infection (ARTI) in 2005. It is the causative agent of nasopharyngeal aspirate disease and death in children. The HboV genomic structure is a linear single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). Its clinical pathogenic characteristics have been extensively studied, however, at present the molecular mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of HBoV infection is not completely clear. In this study, a total of 293 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) between ARTI cases and healthy plasma samples were characterized using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ)-coupled bioinformatics analysis, among which 148 were up-regulated and 135 were down-regulated. Gene Ontology (GO) and Cluster of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG) annotated an enrichment of DEPs in complement activation and biological processes like immunity, inflammation, signal transduction, substance synthesis, and metabolism. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis enriched DEPs mainly in the Wnt signaling pathway (ko04310), PPAR signaling pathway (ko03320), intestinal immune network for IgA production (ko04672), complement and coagulation cascades (ko04610), Toll-like receptor signaling pathway (ko04620) and B cell receptor signaling pathway (ko04662). Further, expression levels of three candidate proteins (upregulated PPP2R1A and CUL1, and downregulated CETP) were validated using western blotting. Our investigation is the first analysis of the proteomic profile of HBoV-infected ARTI cases using the iTRAQ approach, providing a foundation for a better molecular understanding of the pathogenesis of ARTI in children.