Asthma poorly controlled among pregnant women in U.S.

Pregnant women in the U.S. with asthma face numerous health challenges, especially publicly-insured women, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, found that one in five pregnant women with asthma had severe asthma and more than one in four with public insurance did not have their asthma controlled.

The findings were based on a review of medical information on more than 2.6 million women from two insurance claims databases. One database consisted of privately-insured patients while the other database included Medicaid recipients.

Uncontrolled asthma has been linked with increased risk for maternal and newborn complications such as preeclampsia and pre-term birth, the authors noted. Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, senior author of the study and professor of epidemiology, said in a July 10, 2019 Reuters article that the findings suggest that the benefits of appropriate asthma therapies during pregnancy outweigh potential risks.

Read the Reuters article: Poorly-controlled asthma commonly affects pregnancy in U.S