Recent studies have reported that COVID-19 and its complications during pregnancy are not a risk for hearing loss. However, there is limited research on examining auditory brainstem response (ABR) latencies in infants whose mothers had COVID-19 during pregnancy....
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Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
If the study finds ABR differences in COVID-19-exposed infants, audiologists should be alert to potential auditory pathway delays in this group, though no practice change is warranted until results are replicated in larger controlled studies.
With large numbers of pregnancies affected by COVID-19 globally, understanding whether prenatal exposure disrupts infant auditory brainstem development has significant public health and screening implications.
- 01Uses both click and chirp ABR stimuli to assess auditory brainstem function in infants prenatally exposed to COVID-19.
- 02Maternal COVID-19 during pregnancy is the key exposure variable.
- 03Published in International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology (2026).
- 04Chirp stimuli are more frequency-specific and may reveal subtler brainstem response differences than clicks.
- 05Findings could inform whether COVID-19-exposed infants warrant enhanced newborn hearing screening.
Maternal COVID-19 during pregnancy may affect infant auditory brainstem responses.
studyunclear- PMID
- 42208271
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.ijporl.2026.112871.
- Journal
- International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 4
- Population
- Infants born to mothers who had COVID-19 during pregnancy
- Intervention
- Prenatal exposure to maternal COVID-19
- Comparator
- Infants born to mothers without COVID-19 during pregnancy
Primary outcomes
Click-evoked ABR parameters; Chirp-evoked ABR parameters