Am J Gastroenterol. 2023 Apr 11. doi: 10.14309/ajg.0000000000002288. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Several earlier studies have indicated an increased risk of cardiac birth defects among infants born to mothers with celiac disease (CeD). Through linking nationwide Swedish health-care registries we aimed to investigate maternal CeD and risk of any or cardiac birth defects in their offspring.
METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study of infants born 2002-2016 to women with biopsy-proven CeD (villus atrophy, Marsh III) matched to infants born to non-celiac women from the general population. Conditional logistic regression with odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) was used to determine the association between maternal CeD and birth defects. To minimize the impact of intrafamilial confounding we also compared infants born to mothers with CeD to infants born to their non-affected sisters.
RESULTS: A total of 6,990 infants were born to mothers with diagnosed CeD compared to 34,643 infants born to reference mothers. Any birth defect was seen in 234 (33 per 1,000 infants) and 1244 (36/1000) reference infants corresponding to an OR of 0.93 (95% CI 0.81-1.08). Cardiac birth defects were seen in 113 (16/1000) vs. 569 (16/1000) infants (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.80-1.20). Similar ORs for any and cardiac birth defects were also seen in sibling comparisons.
CONCLUSIONS: We found no statistically significant risk of any or cardiac birth defects in infants born to mothers with diagnosed CeD compared to the general population and to their non-affected sisters.
PMID:37040545 | DOI:10.14309/ajg.0000000000002288
