Association between asthma during pregnancy and postpartum depression
There is evidence from several epidemiological studies on the increased risk of depression among women with asthma outside of pregnancy. However, we found no studies designed to investigate the association between asthma during pregnancy and postpartum depression. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the association between asthma during pregnancy and postpartum depression.          Based on Quebec administrative databases, we constructed a cohort of 35,520 pregnancies from asthmatic women and 197,057 pregnancies from non-asthmatic women who delivered between 1998 and 2009. Asthmatic women were identified using a validated operational definition. Postpartum depression was defined and specified with diagnostic codes for depression from the definition of Statistics Canada recorded in the RAMQ or MED-ECHO databases and assessed 1 year postpartum. A generalized estimating equation model was used to estimate the crude and adjusted odds ratios (ORs) of postpartum depression and 95% confidence intervals (CI) comparing women with and without asthma during pregnancy.          The proportion of postpartum depression 1 year after delivery was higher among asthmatic compared to non-asthmatic pregnant women (6.1% vs. 2.9%). After adjusting for potential confounders, we observed that women with asthma were 58% more likely to have postpartum depression (adjusted OR: 1.58; 95%CI, 1.50-1.67) than women without asthma during pregnancy.         The findings of our study suggest an increased risk of postpartum depression among asthmatic women. Attention should be given to depressive symptoms in asthmatic women in the year postpartum to detect postpartum depression more rapidly and intervene more efficiently.
Asthma Pregnancy Postpartum depression Databases