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Cessation of asthma medication in early pregnancy
Rachel Enriquez1, Pingsheng Wu, Marie R Griffin
1Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37232-2650, USA.
Objective:
The objective of the study was to determine whether women alter their use of asthma medications during pregnancy.
Study Design:
Weekly asthma medication use was determined from prescription claims data in a cohort of 112,171 pregnant women aged 15 to 44 years who were continuously enrolled in the Tennessee Medicaid program prior to their singleton pregnancy and who delivered a singleton birth during 1995 to 2001. Change in asthma medication use was evaluated using generalized estimating equation analyses.
Results:
Women with asthma significantly (P < or = 0.0005) decreased their asthma medication use from 5 to 13 weeks of pregnancy. During the first trimester, there was a 23% decline in inhaled corticosteroid prescriptions, a 13% decline in short-acting beta-agonist prescriptions, and a 54% decline in rescue corticosteroid prescriptions.
Conclusions:
Utilization of all categories of asthma medications decreased in early pregnancy, with the largest declines occurring for inhaled and rescue corticosteroids.
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