Asthma and lower airway disease
A population analysis of prescriptions for asthma medications during pregnancy

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Background

It is important to control asthma during pregnancy. However, some studies indicate that women stop or change their asthma medications when they become pregnant.

Objective

We used a population database to analyze changes in prescriptions for asthma medications to patients before, during, and after pregnancy.

Methods

We collected information from a pregnancy database that is part of the population-based pharmacy prescription InterAction Database from the northern Netherlands. Our study cohort comprised 25,709 pregnancies for which prescription data were available. We collected data over a study period of 1 year before pregnancy until 6 months after birth and analyzed data from pregnant women who received at least 1 prescription for asthma medication during the study period (n = 2072), identifying all prescriptions for asthma medication and oral corticosteroids.

Results

Prescriptions for asthma medications did not change during pregnancies from 1994-2003. However, during the 2004-2009 period, there was a significant decrease (P = .017) in prescriptions for asthma medications during the first months of pregnancy compared with the months before pregnancy, especially prescriptions of long-acting bronchodilators. Although most asthma prescriptions continued throughout pregnancy, prescriptions for controller therapies were reduced by 30% during the first months of pregnancy.

Conclusions

Many women stop or reduce their use of asthma medications when they become pregnant. Strategies to safely control asthma during pregnancy are needed.

Section snippets

Database

This study was performed by using a pregnancy database that is part of the population-based pharmacy prescription InterAction Database (IADB). The IADB contains data on prescriptions filled at 55 pharmacies in the northern Netherlands, covering a population of approximately 500,000 subjects from 1994 to 2009. Because of the high level of commitment of patients to their pharmacies, the IADB contains an almost-complete medication history for each subject registered. The database contains

Results

The study cohort comprised 25,709 pregnancies for which prescription data were available during the study period (from 1 year before until 6 months after pregnancy). Of these pregnancies, 2072 (8.1%) in 1695 women involved at least 1 prescription of asthma medication during the study period, including 55 twin pregnancies and 1 triplet pregnancy. The women were a mean age of 30.0 years (range, 15-48 years) when they gave birth after the 2072 pregnancies. In 52 (2.5%) of the pregnancies, the

Discussion

This study shows a significant increase in prescriptions for asthma medications among pregnant women in the period from 2004 to 2009 compared with the period before 2004. The increase was greatest for long-acting bronchodilators and combination preparations (Fig 3). The increase in prescriptions of asthma medications was likely due to the increasing prevalence and awareness of asthma.1, 2 Long-acting bronchodilators and combination preparations are relatively new agents that have been

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  • Cited by (0)

    Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: L. T. W. de Jong–van den Berg is a board member for the ISPE and has received one or more grants from or has one or more grants pending with PROTECT and EUROmediCAT. The rest of the authors declare that they have no relevant conflicts of interest.

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