Research
Study finds maternal flu associations did not persist in sibling analyses
Sibling comparisons found no significant association between maternal influenza during pregnancy and any of five neuropsychiatric disorders in offspring.
A cohort study of births in South Korea and Japan found that associations between influenza during pregnancy and neuropsychiatric disorders in children, seen in population-level analyses, were not found in sibling comparisons. The study was published in JAMA Network Open, MedPage Today reported.
In South Korea's discovery cohort of 2,564,435 mother-child pairs, maternal flu was associated with a higher risk of any neuropsychiatric disorder (adjusted HR 1.09, 95% CI 1.04-1.14). In Japan's replication cohort of 181,681 pairs, the adjusted HR was 1.10 (95% CI 1.02-1.19). In sibling comparisons, the adjusted HRs were 0.98 (95% CI 0.89-1.09) in South Korea and 1.04 (95% CI 0.88-1.22) in Japan.
Study author Dong Keon Yon told MedPage Today that the population-level findings should not be interpreted as evidence that maternal flu directly causes the disorders. He said the sibling analyses were smaller and had wider confidence intervals, and that the findings should not change influenza prevention recommendations during pregnancy.
