By Larry Chiaramonte
I have written two previous posts on the dangers of untreated asthma to pregnant women and their babies. This report from BBC News adds another reason to keep taking your medications.
Asthma link to premature births
By Helen Briggs Health editor, BBC News website
Women with poorly-managed asthma have a higher chance of giving birth early or having a small baby, a review of evidence suggests. Experts in Australia and the US also found a link with other complications, including pre-eclampsia.
They say women with asthma should be monitored at least monthly during their pregnancy.
The researchers looked at asthma studies involving more than a million pregnant women published between 1975 and 2009. They found women with asthma gave birth to babies weighing on average 93g (0.2lb) less than the babies of mothers without asthma. Having asthma increased a mother’s risk of pre-eclampsia by at least 50%, while risks of pre-term birth were increased by about 25%.
Asthma medications themselves do not seem to have direct effects on the mother or baby during pregnancy, experts said in the study, published in the journal BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.