For preemies, less is more

Multiple courses of steroid treatment for mom could harm premature babies

The decades-old clinical practice of giving multiple courses of steroids to pregnant women at risk of delivering prematurely may actually cause harm to the baby, a new study in the Dec. 20/27 Lancet shows.

“This will be the definitive study on repeated doses,” says John Newnham of the University of Western Australia in Perth.