Pregnant Women With Bowel Disease Face Higher Risks
Reported March 20, 2009
FRIDAY, March 20 (HealthDay News) — Pregnant women with inflammatory bowel disease have an elevated risk of developing adverse pregnancy and maternal outcomes, according to research published in the March issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Geoffrey C. Nguyen, M.D., Ph.D., of the Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto in Canada, and colleagues analyzed data from the 2005 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, which indicated an estimated 4.21 million deliveries, of which 3,740 were to women with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.
Women with inflammatory bowel disease had a much higher risk of venous thromboembolism (adjusted odds ratios, 6.12 for Crohn’s disease and 8.44 for ulcerative colitis), the investigators found. They also had a higher risk of cesarean delivery (aOR, 1.72 and 1.29, respectively) and protein-calorie malnutrition (aOR, 20.0 and 60.8, respectively). Women with Crohn’s disease were also more likely to need blood transfusions (aOR, 2.82), the authors note.
“Chronically relapsing conditions such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis have a dramatic impact on the health of women during pregnancy as evidenced by the striking differences in relative risks of maternal outcomes between inflammatory bowel disease and non-inflammatory bowel disease populations. The findings of the study should serve as an impetus for prospective studies to evaluate interventions that may reduce antenatal hospitalizations, venous thromboembolism and malnutrition among pregnant women with inflammatory bowel disease,” Nguyen and colleagues write.
