Sept 21 : A new research has suggested that repeated courses of a drug that is used to improve the survival of unborn premature babies can increase the risk of cerebral palsy in those children.

A corticosteroid called betamethasone (drug) is given to women at the risk of premature delivery to accelerate the development of their baby’s lungs.

Until the year 2000, obstetrician-gynecologists constantly repeated the course of steroids every week, up to 10 to 11 times, in women who remained pregnant after the first course.

However, that year the National Institutes of Health (NIH) panel, which is concerned with the lack of safety data for this practice, recommended multiple courses should be strictly reserved for patients enrolled in clinical trials.

In one of the first such trials to examine the long-term effects of the treatment on the children, women who remained pregnant a week after the initial course of corticosteroids were randomly assigned to weekly courses of corticosteroids or placebo until their babies were born.

A study conducted by members of the NIH-sponsored Maternal-Fetal Medicine Network followed a total of 556 infants at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia and 12 other sites around the country.

The study found that by ages two to three, the two groups of children were physically and neurologically identical, except that six out of 248 children who received multiple courses of corticosteroids had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, compared to only 1 out of 238 children in the placebo group. The mothers of all six children with cerebral palsy in the corticosteroid group had received four or more courses of the drug.

Although the difference in number of children with cerebral palsy was not statistically significant, Dr. Ronald Wapner M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology, Columbia University Medical Center and attending obstetrician and gynecologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, who led the study, concluded that since weekly courses had no long-term benefit and potentially may harm the child; physicians should not recommend multiple weekly courses of corticosteroids.

Results of the study are published in the Sept. 20, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. (ANI)