The risk of TB diagnosis is significantly increased in women during the first six months after pregnancy, according to a new UK-wide study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Researchers analysed data on all women with pregnancies between 1996 and 2008 from the General Practice Research Database. It included a total of 192,801 women who had a total of 264,136 pregnancies and over a 12-year period of study there were 177 TB cases among this group. After adjusting for age, region and socioeconomic status, post-natal women had a significantly higher TB risk outside pregnancy, whereas no significant increase during pregnancy was observed. Overall the researchers calculated that the rate of TB among pregnant and post-natal women was 15.4 per 100,000 people, which is significantly higher than the rate outside of pregnancy – 9.1 per 100,000. It is believed that the reason why more postnatal women were diagnosed with TB than pregnant women could be because the TB infection is not picked up during pregnancy and the researchers hope their findings will encourage those looking after pregnant women to consider possible TB infection in women presenting with symptoms to avoid delays in diagnosis
