(Ivanhoe Newswire) – There is good news for women with multiple sclerosis
(MS) who are pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant. Pregnant women with
multiple sclerosis are only slightly more likely to have cesarean deliveries and
babies with a poor prenatal growth rate than women who do not have MS.
Furthermore, women with MS were no more likely to have other pregnancy problems,
such as preeclampsia and other high blood pressure problems and premature
rupture of membranes, than women in the general population.
The study used a national database from non-federal short-stay hospitals in 38
states. The data included an estimated 18.8 million deliveries, with about
10,000 of those occurring in women with MS.
The women with MS were more likely than women without chronic medical conditions
to have a fetus with intrauterine growth restriction, as measured by ultrasound.
Women with MS were more likely to have a cesarean delivery than those in the
general population (42 percent versus 33 percent).
"These results are reassuring for women with MS," study author Eliza Chakravarty,
MD, MS, of Stanford University School of Medicine was quoted as saying. "Women
and their doctors have been uncertain about the effect of MS on pregnancy, and
some women have chosen to delay or even avoid pregnancy due to the uncertainty.
We found that women with MS did not have an increased risk of most pregnancy
complications."
Researchers also studied women who had diabetes prior to becoming pregnant (not
gestational diabetes), and found that they had higher rates of complications
than women with MS, and had high rates of complications in areas where the women
with MS did not.
SOURCE: Neurology, November 18, 2009
