Drugs to prevent birth may be of no use

When a woman goes into premature labor, doctors usually try to stop the labor from progressing to give the baby enough time to finish developing. Premature births have a lot of risks, not the least being immature lungs and low birth weight. Every day a baby can be kept in the uterus, the better the chances of survival and the lower the risk of complications at birth and later in life.

One medication that is frequently used is called nifedipine – if you know someone with high blood pressure, you may have heard of it because it’s not only a muscle relaxant, it’s used to lower blood pressure.

But, according to a study published in the December issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the medication wasn’t any more effective at stopping labor than was a placebo.

The study involved 71 women who went into labor between their 24th and 34th weeks of pregnancy. They were randomly assigned to receive either nifedipine or placebo. The goal was to keep the pregnancy until at least 37 weeks. According to the study results, in both groups, 40% of the women reached the goal of 37 weeks and the health of the babies in both groups was about the same as well.

One of the concerns of using nifedipine is that it does lower blood pressure, so it would have that effect on pregnant women as well.

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Tags: pregnancy blog, nifedipine, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, premature labor, premature birth, low birth weight