MedWire News: Women with bipolar disorder are at increased risk for having low birthweight, preterm birth, and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) babies, say Taiwanese scientists who advocate early intervention in order to prevent adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Previous studies have indicated that women suffering from severe mental disorders are more likely to have adverse pregnancy outcomes, yet it is not clear whether the risks for preterm birth, low birthweight, and SGA are increased in bipolar disorder.

To investigate further, Herng-Ching Lin, from Taipei Medical University, and colleagues gathered information on 528,398 singleton births between 2001 and 2003 from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Dataset.

In all, 337 (0.064%) of the women were diagnosed with bipolar disorder, the team reports in the Journal of Affective Disorders. Compared with women with no history of mental illness, women with bipolar disorder were more likely to have low birthweight infants, preterm birth, and SGA infants, at 9.8% versus 5.7%, 14.2% versus 6.9%, and 22.3% versus 15.7%, respectively.

Furthermore, compared with women without mental illness, women with bipolar disorder were significantly more likely to be older than 34 years, to be educated only to junior high school level or less, to be unmarried, to have gestational hypertension, to have a lower family monthly income, and to have a lower paternal educational level.

Taking into account infant gender, parity, maternal age, highest paternal and maternal educational level, mother’s marital status, and family monthly income, regression analysis demonstrated that women with bipolar disorder were significantly more likely to have low birthweight infants, preterm birth, and SGA infants, at odds ratios of 1.66, 2.08, and 1.47, respectively.

The team concludes: “Clinicians should be aware of the increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes among these women.

“More active monitoring and early intervention to counter potential low birthweight and preterm births should be initiated for women with bipolar disorder.”

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