Maternal and infant outcomes of pregnancy associated with anti-SSA/RO antibodies: a systematic review and meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE: The relationship between anti-SSA/RO antibodies and pregnancy has been reported previously, and we aim to visualize the rates of maternal and infant outcomes with anti-SSA/RO. METHODS: We systematically searched records from Pubmed, Cochrane, Embase, and Web of Science databases, pooled incidence rates of adverse outcomes of pregnancy, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were performed with RStudio. RESULTS: A total of 890 records comprising 1675 patients and 1920 pregnancies were searched from the electronic databases. For maternal outcomes, the pooled estimate rates were 4% for termination of pregnancy, 5% for spontaneous abortion, 26% for preterm labor, and 50% for cesarean operation. While for fetal outcomes, the pooled estimate rates were 4% for perinatal death, 3% for intrauterine growth retardation, 6% for endocardial fibroelastosis, 6% for dilated cardiomyopathy, 7% for congenital heart block, 12% for congenital heart block recurrence, 19% for cutaneous neonatal lupus erythematosus, 12% for hepatobiliary disease and 16% for hematological manifestations. A subgroup analysis of congenital heart block prevalence was performed, diagnostic method and study region were found to affect heterogeneity to some extent. CONCLUSION: Cumulative analysis of data from real-world studies confirmed adverse pregnancy outcomes of women with anti-SSA/RO, serves as a reference and a guide for the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of these women, thereby enhancing maternal and infant health. Additional studies with real-world cohorts are required to validate these results. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12969-023-00803-0.