Andrea Edlow, M.D., M.Sc.

Andrea Edlow is an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She is also the Director of Obstetric Research at MGH.

Edlow’s laboratory focuses on the effects of maternal obesity and maternal immune activation on fetal brain development and offspring behavior, and how these effects are modified by fetal sex. Her lab was one of the first to use amniotic fluid supernatant and umbilical cord blood to investigate real-time fetal brain development in obese human pregnancy. Gene expression profiling of these two biofluids identified abnormal gene expression signatures in fetuses of obese women, highlighting increased inflammation and dysregulated brain development.

More recently, Edlow has investigated the effects of maternal severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection on the maternal, placental and cord blood immune profile, and how maternal, placental and fetal effects of SARS-CoV-2 are modified by fetal sex.