Pregnant women with MS reassured by research findings

November 20, 2009 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News, Pregnancy

Pregnant women with multiple sclerosis (MS) are likely to have a healthy pregnancy according to new research.

New research out of the Stanford University School of Medicine shows that women suffering from MS only have a slightly increased risk of requiring caesarean delivery and are no more likely to suffer from problems like preeclampsia or premature birth.

The research, published in the November journal Neurology, focused on 18.8 million deliveries in the United States, of which approximately 10,000 deliveries coming from mothers suffering from MS. They found that 42 percent of women with MS required delivery through caesarean section while only 33 percent of women in the general population required the procedure. Risk for caesarean delivery was found to be 30 percent higher in women with MS.

Yet aside from that, the team found very little difference between MS sufferers and the general population when it came to conditions like low birth weight and preeclampsia, a condition related high blood pressure is triggered by pregnancy. Those outcomes occurred in MS mothers only 2.7 percent of the time, compared to 1.9 percent of the time in healthy mothers.

Dr. Eliza Chakravarty, co-author of the research, said: “These results are reassuring for women. Women and their doctors have been uncertain about the effect of MS on pregnancy, and some women have chosen to delay or even avoid pregnancy due to the uncertainty.”

She added that it was additionally encouraging that women with MS “did not have an increased risk of most pregnancy complications.”

The researchers also looked at women with diabetes during the study, and they found that women who had diabetes before becoming pregnant were at greater risk of having complications during pregnancy compared to women with MS.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Gary M. Franklin, of the University of Washington, and Dr. Helen Tremlett, of the University of British Columbia, said that the research was “a welcome addition” to existing data on the subject. The data provides better information to doctors and their female patients with MS, especially those that are pregnant or considering conception.