According to a new study by Australian researchers as many as 5 million Australians have recurring back problems. The researchers at the George Institute for International Health have also found that after one bout of back problems one in four people will experience a recurrence within one year. Professor Chris Maher, the lead author of
Full Post: Advice for 5 million Aussies suffering with back pain - what’s good for the heart is good for the back!
Women can usually keep using the same asthma drugs they were using before they got pregnant.
Budesonide sprays are the best studied and can be regarded as safe. More trials of other essential medicines are necessary however. According to the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), more data from trials could reassure women who worry about the safety of their drugs during pregnancy. The Institute has reviewed the evidence on asthma in pregnancy and published information for pregnant women on its website, www.informedhealthonline.org.
More trials on medications in pregnancy are necessary
Pregnant women with asthma want to know whether it is possible for the medications they take to harm their baby - and they want to know what they can do to reduce the risks of their asthma for their unborn baby. “Regulations ensure that drug product information lists unanswered safety questions about use in pregnancy. That can be somewhat misleading and cause anxiety. Imprecise research results in medical journals sometimes lead to worrying media reports. Some recent reports in Germany even wrongly suggested that asthma drugs could cause a malformation rate of almost 10%,” according to the Institute’s Director, Professor Peter Sawicki.
Essential medicines are generally not researched enough in pregnancy, and so remain associated with a lot of uncertainty. This can be a big problem for pregnant women. Professor Sawicki said: “In some countries large birth registers provide information on medication use in pregnancy and malformations in babies. But that cannot replace the more precise assessment from trials. There need to more trials that pregnant women can participate in. We need more reliable knowledge about the effects of essential medicines in pregnancy.”
Avoiding asthma attacks is critical in pregnancy
Good self-management can keep asthma under control. “For women with asthma who have not been actively self-managing their asthma, pregnancy is a good time to start,” Professor Sawicki said. “Good asthma control prevents asthma attacks, and that ensures that the baby’s oxygen supply is not interrupted. It lowers the risk of needing to be hospitalised with an asthma attack.”
Women with asthma can usually keep using the same medications during pregnancy that helped them before. Pregnancy is not a good time to try out treatments where little is known about the effects on unborn babies. Most asthma medications have not been studied in trials that include pregnant women. However, budesonide sprays have been studied enough: women can be confident about budesonide’s safety for pregnancy. Budesonide is a steroid.
Quitting smoking reduces the risk of a baby developing asthma
Quitting smoking is the best thing a woman can do to protect her baby from developing asthma. “Researchers are studying a variety of options for preventing asthma in babies, including diet and probiotics. Quitting smoking is the only effective prevention that has been demonstrated to date”, according to Professor Sawicki. This also counts for the father: when parents quit smoking, they can reduce the risk that their child will later develop asthma or allergies.
http://www.iqwig.de/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Posts:
A new study from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research has revealed the consequences of heavy and binge drinking on pregnancy even after these drinking patterns have stopped. The study, to be published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, investigated the relationship between prenatal exposure to alcohol and the effects on
Full Post: Heavy and binge drinking during pregnancy increases risk of preterm birth
Women who took the antidepressant fluoxetine during the first three months of pregnancy gave birth to four times as many babies with heart problems as women who did not and the levels were three times higher in women taking paroxetine. Although some of the conditions were serious, others were not severe and resolved themselves without
Full Post: Pregnancy study finds strong association between two antidepressants and heart anomalies
Cigarette smoking during pregnancy is associated with potentially harmful changes in both maternal and fetal thyroid function, according to a new study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism ( JCEM ). “We studied the influence of cigarette smoking on thyroid function of two groups of women at different
Full Post: Smoking during pregnancy impacts thyroid function of mother and fetus
Women who have had two or more induced abortions have a reduced risk of pre-eclampsia by 60%. It is not currently understood to what degree physical activity during pregnancy protects against pre-eclampsia, compared to previous studies. This is shown in two new studies from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) that use data from
Full Post: Reduced risk for pre-eclampsia among women who have aborted
New research from the U.S. has found that a drug widely used to prevent premature births offers no benefit. Pregnant woman who enter into early labour are often given drugs to quieten the woman’s uterus and prevent premature birth. Pregnancy normally lasts 40 weeks and preterm births are defined as deliveries before 37 weeks of
Full Post: No benefit from nifedipine widely used to prevent premature births --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
