A University of Alberta-led research team has identified an association between asthma in pregnant women and adverse outcomes for their newborns, including preterm birth, low birth weight and caesarean section delivery.
"For women who are pregnant or planning to get pregnant, it's important to be aware of their asthma management and see their doctors to connect with resources," says principal investigator Padma Kaul, professor of medicine and Canadian Institutes of Health Research Sex and Gender Science Chair. "We are also trying to give clinicians information that may be useful in their decision-making."
In recently published research in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in Practice, the team tracked health data (including hospital visits, prescriptions, diagnoses and blood work results) for more than 400,000 pregnancies in Alberta between 2009 and 2018.
Of those expectant mothers, 8.6 per cent or 37,394 had an asthma diagnosis. In those mothers with asthma, seven per cent were experiencing active asthma symptoms, 40 per cent had symptoms within the year before their pregnancy and 52 per cent had been diagnosed earlier in their lives.
The researchers found a 15 per cent higher risk of preterm birth, an 11 per cent higher risk of low birth weight and a 10 per cent higher risk of C-section among the newborns whose mothers had asthma, compared with those who had no asthma diagnosis.
