Ondansetron Use in Pregnancy.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends early treatment of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy to stop progression to hyperemesis gravidarum. Nausea and vomiting and hyperemesis gravidarum typically occur during the first trimester, the sensitive time for exposure to teratogens because organogenesis is occurring in the embryo. An efficacious treatment used widely across the United States for both nausea and vomiting of pregnancy and hyperemesis gravidarum is ondansetron. Recent studies have provided conflicting findings on the safety of ondansetron during pregnancy. There are numerous limitations in the current literature on ondansetron safety including exposure to the medication is not limited to sensitive windows of organogenesis, there is a lack of information on dosing and compliance, self-reports of exposure are commonly used, an inadequate accounting exists for other factors that may explain the relationship between ondansetron exposure and the adverse outcome, and there exists a lack of biologic plausibility by which ondansetron might cause harm. It is the authors' opinion that current data do not support a reluctance to treat women with ondansetron in clinical practice.

Maternal obesity and gestational weight gain are risk factors for infant death.

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of the joint and independent relationships of gestational weight gain and prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) on risk of infant mortality was performed. METHODS: This study used Pennsylvania linked birth-infant death records (2003-2011) from infants without anomalies born to mothers with prepregnancy BMI categorized as underweight (n = 58,973), normal weight (n = 610,118), overweight (n = 296,630), grade 1 obesity (n = 147,608), grade 2 obesity (n = 71,740), and grade 3 obesity (n = 47,277). Multivariable logistic regression models stratified by BMI category were used to estimate dose-response associations between z scores of gestational weight gain and infant death after confounder adjustment. RESULTS: Infant mortality risk was lowest among normal-weight women and increased with rising BMI category. For all BMI groups except for grade 3 obesity, there were U-shaped associations between gestational weight gain and risk of infant death. Weight loss and very low weight gain among women with grades 1 and 2 obesity were associated with high risks of infant mortality. However, even when gestational weight gain in women with obesity was optimized, the predicted risk of infant death remained higher than that of normal-weight women. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions aimed at substantially reducing preconception weight among women with obesity and avoiding very low or very high gestational weight gain may reduce risk of infant death.