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Tag Archives: stillbirth
Woman Claims Spinach Smoothies Caused Stillbirth, Sues Grocery Store
- A woman suffered a stillbirth after consuming listeria-contaminated spinach, a lawsuit claims.
- Listeria can cause listeriosis, which is more common, and more dangerous, in pregnancy.
- About 22% of cases of listeriosis in pregnancy result in stillbirth or newborn death.
A Philadelphia woman who suffered a stillbirth says the baby spinach she added to her smoothies a few days prior is to blame, according to a new lawsuit.
The spinach, made by Fresh Express, was contaminated with Listeria, although the woman didn’t know that at the time, the lawsuit says.
Listeria, a bacteria that causes the disease Listeriosis, is far more likely — and much more dangerous — in pregnancy, and is a known cause of pregnancy loss, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The woman, identified by NBC News as 25-year-old Mecca Shabazz, is suing Fresh Express and the grocery store for “wrongful death of the unborn child, and bodily injury and emotional stress to the expectant mother,” the law firm’s press release says.
“In addition to the tragic loss of this baby, we are fighting to raise awareness with the public who blindly relies upon food manufacturers and distributors to provide clean, safe and uncontaminated food products,” attorney Julianna Merback Burdo, a partner in Wapner Newman’s Catastrophic Injury Practice, said in the release.
“Safety within the food chain must start with those who process, package, transport and sell us food,” Merback Burdo added.
Shabazz was quarantining at home with COVID-19 when she consumed the spinach
Shabazz, then over 30 weeks pregnant, went to the hospital with flu-like symptoms on December 11, 2021. Doctors confirmed the fetus was healthy and sent her home to quarantine, the press release says.
While resting, her grandmother purchased Fresh Express baby spinach from Fresh Grocer for Shabazz to use in smoothies.
On December 15, Shabazz returned to the hospital with bleeding and painful contractions. There, providers found no fetal movement or heartbeat, and Shabazz delivered the stillborn baby the same day, the lawsuit says.
An autopsy confirmed the sole cause of death was due to Listeria.
Five days later, Fresh Express announced a “precautionary recall” on its leafy greens days due to a listeria outbreak in Pennsylvania and other states. The recall included the baby spinach the mother consumed, according to the suit.
The baby would have been Shabazz and her husband’s first. “This baby could have been born the day before this spinach was consumed and survived and thrived,” Burdo told NBC.
Fresh Express and its parent company, Chiquita Brands International, did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Listeria is dangerous in pregnancy
Listeria is a “big issue in pregnancy” and known cause of stillbirth, Dr. Stephanie Ros, an OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Florida, told Insider.
That’s why pregnant woman are advised to stay away from foods that are more likely to be affected by it, like deli meat, soft cheese, and raw sprouts. Spinach is not a food pregnant people are typically told to avoid; in fact, it’s encouraged as a great source of folic acid, which can help prevent miscarriages.
While healthy people who accidentally consume listeria-infected foods don’t usually get sick, people with compromised immune systems, including those who are pregnant, are more likely to get listeriosis and to get seriously ill from it, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Specifically, pregnant women are 20 times more likely to become infected than non-pregnant healthy adults, and about 17% of pregnant patients get listeriosis.
The infection can pass to the fetus, and can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, premature labor, and low birth weight, the organization reports.
Newborns with Listeriosis who survive birth can suffer from respiratory issues, fever, rash, lethargy, and even death.
Pregnant women who have Listeriosis with symptoms including fever should be treated with IV antibiotics, ACOG says.
Covid-19 Linked to Four Times Higher Risk of Stillbirth During Delta Era, CDC Finds
New research affirms the added risk that pregnant people and their families face from covid-19. Data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that pregnant people infected with covid-19 are more likely to have a stillbirth; this link appears to have become stronger after the emergence of the Delta variant.
Studies have suggested for some time that covid-19 is more dangerous for pregnant people. They’re more likely to experience serious illness, death, and delivery complications. This new research, published by the CDC last week, provides a closer look at the risk of stillbirth posed by the coronavirus, particularly the Delta variant.
The study looked at over a million hospital deliveries performed between March 2020 and September 2021. Stillbirths—the loss of a baby before or during delivery—were generally low during the time period. But individuals infected with covid-19 at the time of delivery were still significantly more likely to have a stillbirth. Overall, about 1.26% of infected pregnant people had a delivery that ended in stillbirth, compared to 0.64% of those not infected.
The Delta variant of the coronavirus is much more transmissible than the original strains of the coronavirus that first spread around the globe last year. But there’s mixed evidence on Delta’s ability to cause more serious illness. According to the CDC, there is data showing that people in general may be more likely to become hospitalized as a result of Delta, but that hospitalized people then have similar outcomes as they did with pre-Delta strains. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case for pregnant people.
During July 2021 to September 2021, when the Delta variant had become firmly established as the predominant form of the virus, the rate of stillbirth substantially rose among covid-infected people, from 0.98% of deliveries before Delta to 2.70%. Compared to non-infected people, this meant a roughly fourfold increased risk of stillbirth.
The findings seem to confirm anecdotal reports of more stillbirths and other complications during the latest Delta-led peak of the pandemic, and they don’t bode well for the near future, either. Covid-19 cases are undeniably on the rise again, though they remain concentrated among the unvaccinated.
Compared to the general public, however, pregnant people are still less likely to get vaccinated for covid-19, in part due to misconceptions about the vaccines’ safety. In truth, studies have shown no increased risk of negative health outcomes from the vaccination of pregnant people, and experts, including the current study’s authors, continue to urge that they get vaccinated as soon as possible.
“Implementing evidence-based covid-19 prevention strategies, including vaccination before or during pregnancy, is critical to reduce the impact of covid-19 on stillbirths,” the authors wrote.
Delta variant linked to increased risk of stillbirth, CDC study finds
Pregnant women who become infected with the delta variant are at increased risk of a stillbirth or dying during childbirth, according to two new studies published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.
The research expands on reports from doctors nationwide who have noted an unprecedented rise in pregnant women becoming critically ill with Covid-19, particularly as the highly contagious variant has taken hold.
“We are seeing loads of pregnancy complications from Covid-19 infection,” said Dr. Ellie Ragsdale, director of fetal intervention at UH Cleveland Medical Center.
Those complications include premature deliveries, abnormally high blood pressure in pregnant women, as well as pregnancy loss, said Ragsdale, who was not involved with the new research.
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One of the new studies analyzed the outcomes of more than 1.2 million pregnancies nationwide between March 2020 and September of this year.
Stillbirths were rare in the United States before the pandemic, at a rate of .59 percent. Those rates remained similar even when the pandemic hit, at .64 percent among women who were never diagnosed with Covid.
But the rate of stillbirths rose to .98 percent among expectant mothers infected with the coronavirus, according to the CDC report.
And once the delta variant took hold in July this year, the rates rose exponentially: 2.7 percent of Covid-positive pregnancies ended in stillbirth.
“Although stillbirth was a rare outcome overall,” the study authors wrote, documented Covid diagnosis was associated with a marked increase in the risk for stillbirth, “with a stronger association during the period of delta variant predominance.”
The study doesn’t prove the delta variant causes more fetal demise, but increasingly, obstetricians are documenting notable differences in how much oxygen fetuses can absorb, depending on whether their mothers have been diagnosed with Covid.
Ragsdale said she and her colleagues have noted that pregnant women with Covid have a difficult time getting oxygen-rich blood to their growing fetuses.
“We’re seeing areas of the placenta that are oxygen deprived,” she said. “That’s the baby’s source of oxygen and survival in pregnancy.”
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The CDC analysis didn’t assess vaccination status, but unvaccinated pregnant women may be at particular risk, experts said.
As the delta variant took hold in July, the CDC said, just under a third of pregnant women had been vaccinated against Covid.
Among 34,016 Covid-positive pregnant women, 348 pregnancies were lost, the CDC reported.
What’s more, the virus can also be deadly to the mother, particularly if she has an underlying health condition. A separate CDC report published Friday looked at 15 deaths among Covid-positive pregnant women in Mississippi. Nearly all had some kind of chronic health condition, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.
None had been fully vaccinated. In September, the CDC issued a health alert urging pregnant women to be vaccinated against Covid. At the time, the agency reported that less than a third had received a Covid vaccine.
“We have evidence to show there is no increased risk of miscarriage or poor pregnancy outcomes from the vaccine,” said Dr. Zsakeba Henderson, deputy chief medical and health officer for the March of Dimes. “All evidence points to the safety of this vaccine.”
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