Patterns of prednisone use during pregnancy in women with rheumatoid arthritis: Daily and cumulative dose.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

To characterize prednisone use in pregnant women with rheumatoid arthritis using individual-level heat-maps and clustering individual trajectories of prednisone dose, and to evaluate the association between prednisone dose trajectory groups and gestational length.

Methods

This study included pregnant women with rheumatoid arthritis who enrolled in the MotherToBaby Autoimmune Diseases in Pregnancy Study (2003-2014) before gestational week 20 and reported prednisone use without another oral glucocorticoid during pregnancy (n = 254). Information on medication use and pregnancy outcomes was collected by telephone interview plus by medical record review. Prednisone daily dose and cumulative dose were plotted by gestational day using a heat map for each individual. K-means

SUBMITTER: Palmsten K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6039094 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature