Pregnancy complications not increased by inhaled corticosteroids in women with asthma
Women with asthma who use inhaled corticosteroids while pregnant do not have an increased risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension or pre-eclampsia. Women with uncontrolled and severe asthma, however, may be at an increased risk of these conditions.
These are the findings of a team of Canadian researchers who studied
data on 3,505 pregnant women with asthma. They calculated the women’s
mean daily dose of inhaled corticosteroids and recorded diagnoses of
complications.
The researchers found that use of inhaled corticosteroids at any stage
of the pregnancy was not associated with an increased risk of pregnancy-induced
hypertension (adjusted odds ratio 1.02, 95 per cent confidence interval
0.77 to 1.34) or pre-eclampsia (1.06, 0.74 to 1.53). Oral corticosteroids,
however, were associated with an increased risk of pregnancy-induced
hypertension (1.57, 1.02 to 2.41) and pre-eclampsia (1.72, 0.98 to 3.02),
as were other markers of uncontrolled and severe asthma, such as using
more than three doses of a short-acting beta agonist per week before
pregnancy or an admission to hospital in the past year.
The researchers say that a lower level of asthma control during pregnancy
is likely to be responsible for increased complications.
The study appears as an advance
online publication in the BMJ. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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