Pregnancy Poses Higher Risk of Dying From Swine Flu, Study Says

[indigo girl]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aho3A3FonLo4

This is important information.

Swine flu in pregnancy can cause life-threatening disease and warrants treatment with antiviral drugs as soon as possible, a study in the medical journal Lancet found.

The study, to be published in the Aug. 8 issue, found about one in eight people who died after contracting the new virus was pregnant. The hospitalization rate for pregnant women was more than four times that of the general population, the study showed.

The findings support advice from health authorities including the World Health Organization that pregnancy may put women at greater risk of developing complications from the pandemic H1N1 flu. The data collected and analyzed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are the most comprehensive available to date on the impact of this novel flu virus among pregnant women, the Atlanta-based agency said in a statement today.

"If a pregnant woman feels like she may have influenza, she needs to call her health-care provider right away," Denise Jamieson, lead author of the study, said in the statement. "Clinicians who treat pregnant women should have a system in place for triaging pregnant women with influenza-like symptoms and they should not delay in initiating appropriate antiviral therapy."

Six deaths of pregnant women with H1N1 were reported to the CDC between April 15 and June 16, representing 13 percent of the 45 fatalities made known to the agency during that period.

All were healthy before they caught the virus, which caused them to develop viral pneumonia leading to acute respiratory distress requiring mechanical ventilation. All pregnant women who died didn't start taking antiviral medicines soon enough, according to the CDC statement.

A federal advisory committee on vaccines will meet today on immunization for swine flu and who should get priority for the shot.

Pregnant women's greater risk of death will make them likely to be among the first group in the U.S. advised to get vaccinated against the pandemic virus, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

Some clinicians hesitate to treat pregnant women with antiviral medications because of unfounded concerns for the developing fetus, the CDC's Jamieson said.

"This is the wrong approach," she said. "It is critical that pregnant women, in particular, be treated promptly."

While pregnant women don't seem to be at greater risk than the general population of catching the pandemic bug, they do seem to be more likely than non-pregnant women to develop complications from any type of flu infection, said Shaun Brennecke, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Melbourne. This is especially the case during the latter stages of pregnancy, he said.

"We have also noticed that with pregnant women, their condition will deteriorate quite fast," said Tim Smyth, deputy director general of health for New South Wales, Australia's most-populous state.

Christchurch Hospital, the main public hospital in the city in New Zealand, has treated two critically ill pregnant women with severe viral pneumonia, said Geoff Shaw, a consultant in the intensive care unit. One was 21 weeks pregnant and the other 34 weeks, he said.

"It's almost unheard of for healthy, pregnant women to get a severe, life-threatening pneumonia, and we have two at the same time," Shaw said over the telephone last week. "We have never seen that before."

The reasons for the higher risk are speculative, Brennecke said. Possible causes include subtle changes in a pregnant woman's immunological resilience for dealing with certain viral infections, he said in an e-mailed response to questions last month.

Other reasons may include changes in lung functioning late in pregnancy caused by the enlarged uterus pressing up against the lungs, limiting lung expansion, modified coughing capacity and possibly changing blood flow through various areas of lung tissue, he said.

"The combination of these effects may impair the lungs' natural ability to deal with airborne viruses such as flu viruses," Brennecke said.

(hat tip flutrackers/sally)

[oramar]

For the first time the local news stations in my area are running stories warning of the higher pregnancy risk. About time, that info has been around for a month or two.