Women at risk of delivering a premature baby are often given multiple doses of steroids to hasten fetal lung development and to ward off respiratory distress in the newborn. However, one dose may offer the same benefit and multiple doses could cause infection and death. That's according to preliminary research here at a meeting of maternal-fetal medicine.
Research shows possible links between repeat dosing and certain complications.
In one study, M. Sean Esplin, MD, and colleagues found that children who were treated before birth with repeat doses of steroids were more likely at 9 and 18 months old to have certain developmental delays than those who received one dose and those who had not received steroids at all. Esplin is a fellow in maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. In his study of 453 infants, the mothers who received multiple doses were more likely to have infections in the uterus than were those who had received single doses. In a study Guinn conducted at several centers, women received either a single dose or weekly doses of betamethasone, a common steroid used to prevent complications from preterm labor. Guinn is an assistant professor of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver.