Pregnancy tips Topical Steroids and Pregnancy Complications

I think we sometimes forget that medications that are applied to the skin still enter our bloodstream and can negatively affect a pregnancy. If you've been prescribed topical steroids, you should check with your doctor and pharmacist about its safety for use in pregnancy. Read more:

findarticles.com

From the article:

Investigators at Chang Gung University in Taoyuan, Taiwan, and the University of Oxford (England) used the U.K. General Practice Research Database to identify 35,503 women who had been prescribed topical corticosteroids during or shortly before pregnancy, and a control group comprising 48,630 unexposed pregnant women.

Maternal exposure to potent or very potent topical steroids was associated with an adjusted 2.1-fold increased relative risk of fetal growth restriction.

Moreover, a significant dose-response relationship was found, such that for every 30 g of prescribed potent or very potent topical steroids, the risk of fetal growth retardation climbed by about 3%.

The risk rose with the increasing potency of the topical medication, Dr. Stein said at the meeting.

The investigators estimated that 168 pregnant women would have to receive potent or very potent topical steroids in order to result in one additional case of fetal growth restriction ( J. Invest. Dermatol. 2010 [doi:10.1038/jid.2010. 392]).