Inhaled beclomethasone in pregnant asthmatic women--a systematic review.

The aim of this study was to systematically review the safety and efficacy of inhaled beclomethasone for asthma treatment in pregnant women. We performed a systematic review in Medline, LILACS and SciELO electronic databases in December 2012. A total of 3433 articles were found by using the keywords asthma, pregnancy and beclomethasone. Among these, 1666 were from Medline, via PubMed, and 1767 were from LILACS and SciELO. Nine of these articles were selected. Only one paper suggested an increased foetal risk for congenital malformations, and one other for offspring endocrine and metabolic disturbances. Data are mostly reassuring, supporting the use of glucocorticoid inhalants during pregnancy, and we found no evidence of inferiority in relation to efficacy and safety of beclomethasone compared to other drugs used in pregnant asthmatic women.

Optical pulse modeling with Hermite-Gaussian functions.

An asymptotic method for synthesis and analysis of optical pulses using Hermite-Gaussian functions is outlined. This enables distortion of arbitrary pulse waveforms in monomode fibers to be studied analytically, even with chirping of the light source. This pulse-modeling technique is proposed to be particularly suitable for the synthesis of analytically tractable representations of realistic pulse shapes, providing a flexible and effective platform for analytic system optimization.