NYU Pediatric Obesity, Metabolism and Kidney Cohort Center

PROJECT Summary: The novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has largely spared children, with relatively few requiring medicalcare. A small case series failed to reveal effects on birth outcomes in mothers with COVID-19 pneumonia, yetthe absence of effects may in part relate to these mothers having been infected in third trimester, as the timingof infection is well known to influence adverse effects in pregnancy. A major barrier to population-basedstudies of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been the lack of a noninvasive method to detect viral RNA.Nasopharyngeal swabs are invasive, require personal protective equipment and swabs which have been inlimited supply, and may be less sensitive than salivary samples for SARS-CoV-2 detection. Studies ofadaptive immunity following infection in children have also been limited by the need for venipuncture to collectsufficient serum for validated testing of antibody. Our research team has developed novel methods formeasuring SARS-CoV-2 infection in saliva, as well as IgG and IgM antibody responses to the spike protein andthe receptor binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 in dried blood spots (DBS). Substantial psychosocial stress islikely to have occurred in pregnant women during the pandemic, whether due to fear of infection, job loss,economic stress, psychological or physical trauma, or other factors. Psychological stress during pregnancy isknown to increase prematurity, yet stress and viral effects have not been examined together as yet. We hadpreviously received PO permission to reallocate Year 4 funds in the NYU Children's Health and EnvironmentStudy (CHES, UH3OD23305) and the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH,UH3OD023290) to add remote and repeated saliva, dried blood spot, and hair collection in cohortsprospectively enrolling mothers into ECHO, using kits assembled by Fisher BioSciences for the ECHOprogram. We propose to expand this effort over the next year to newly enrolled mothers in NYU CHES (N=200mothers), CCCEH (N=20 mothers) as well as the Michigan Archive for Research in Children's Health (MARCH,UH3OD23285, N=20 mothers). We also wish to continue data collection in already enrolled NYU CHES(N=340 pregnant women as of March 1, 2020) and CCCEH (N=40 pregnant women as of March 1, 2020)mothers. The data will be supplemented by chart Abstract: Ion for all SARS-CoV-2 testing.