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Is it safe to take asthma medications when pregnant?

Is it safe to take asthma medications when pregnant?

English Transcript

Allergist Syed Shahzad Mustafa, MD: Individuals who have asthma who become pregnant should generally remain on their asthma medications because they are thought to be safe and we don’t want to discontinue medications that would potentially worsen asthma. Pregnancy is an interesting time in a lot of ways but for asthma as well.

Some individuals, their asthma will get better when they’re pregnant, but others, they can get worse when they’re pregnant. But we do believe that most inhalers are felt to be safe in pregnancy and should be continued. In fact, even other medications like biologics or injectable medications are generally thought to be safe and continued in pregnancy.

You really want to not lose control of your asthma during pregnancy, so you want to be careful but this is takes a lot of work with the OB team, your primary care physician, your allergist. So absolutely consult with them.

And then some asthmatics are also on allergy shots, for example, so there’s a lot of adjusting and being thoughtful during pregnancy, but the vast majority of our therapies are thought to be safe in pregnancy and probably need to be continued during pregnancy.

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