Health and Fitness News and Notes

Using antacids during pregnancy is linked to asthma in offspring, a systematic review of research has found.

Researchers pooled data from eight observational studies and concluded that the risk of asthma in childhood increased by 34 percent when the mother used proton pump inhibitors and by 57 percent with the use of histamine-2 receptor antagonists. The study is in Pediatrics.

PPIs and H2 blockers are considered safe and effective prescription drugs for treating gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, a common complication in pregnancy. They are also available over the counter.

No observational study can establish causation, and genetic or environmental factors could explain the association. Yet even after controlling for maternal asthma, use of other drugs during pregnancy, age of the mother at birth, smoking and other variables, the association persisted.

“Further prospective clinical observational studies are required to confirm these results before recommendations on the restriction of acid-suppressive medications during pregnancy can be given,” said the senior author, Dr. Huahao Shen, a professor at the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China. But, he added, the information from this study “may help clinicians and parents to use caution when deciding whether to take acid-suppressing drugs during pregnancy.”

For most women undergoing in vitro fertilization, fresh embryos work just as well as frozen ones.

Previous trials have suggested that using only frozen embryos might improve pregnancy rates in women with polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, a hormonal disorder that affects about 10 percent of women. (Women with this condition ovulate irregularly and typically have a poorer response to IVF treatment.) But in two large randomized trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found using fresh or frozen embryos makes no difference for the majority of women who do not have PCOS.

In the first study, of 2,157 women without PCOS, 50.2 percent of fresh embryo transfers resulted in a live birth, and so did 48.7 percent of the frozen transfers. The difference was statistically insignificant.

In the second, of 782 women without PCOS, live birthrates were 33.8 percent for the frozen-embryo group and 31.5 percent for the fresh, again an insignificant difference.

“Unless there are specific factors that require it, you can safely go with a fresh transfer of your first embryo,” said the senior author of the second study, Dr. Ben W. Mol, a professor of obstetrics at the University of Adelaide in Australia. “Transfer your first embryo fresh. There is no need to completely go around the first fresh transfer.”