Timing of Maternal Asthma Diagnosis in Relation to Adverse Perinatal Outcomes

It is unclear if asthma diagnosed during pregnancy puts the fetus at a higher risk of poor perinatal outcomes than pre-existing asthma.

To assess if the risks of prematurity, major malformations, and small-for-gestational age (SGA) are higher in women with asthma diagnosed during versus pre-pregnancy.

We retrospectively analyzed a cohort of pregnant women aged ≥15 years with and without incident asthma, constructed from health administrative databases. Follow-up began 24 months before pregnancy onset (cohort entry) and ended at delivery. Incident asthma was defined as a first diagnosis among those without asthma in the 8 years before cohort entry. Time was classified into pre-pregnancy and each trimester until delivery. We fit inverse probability weighted Poisson models to estimate marginal relative risks (RRs) for prematurity (delivery <37th week), major malformations, and SGA (birth weight <10th percentile) comparing women with and without asthma, assessing the asthma timing of diagnosis interaction term via a Wald test.

In a cohort of 122,880 deliveries, the increased risk of prematurity, but not SGA, due to incident asthma was higher in those diagnosed during the second (RR, 1.34; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08-1.65; Wald P = .05) and third (RR, 1.93; 95% CI, 1.62-2.29; Wald P < .01) trimesters relative to pre-pregnancy (RR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.98-1.15). A trend toward an increased risk of major malformations was observed in those diagnosed during the first trimester (RR, 1.18; 95% CI, 0.94-1.49; Wald P = .15) than pre-pregnancy (RR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.92-1.07).

Asthma diagnosed during, versus before, pregnancy was associated with a greater prematurity risk, suggesting an important role of preconception and prenatal screening.