Serious Infections in Offspring Exposed in Utero to Vedolizumab.

Controlling IBD during pregnancy is important for maternal and fetal outcomes. We created a cohort of children born to mothers with IBD, comparing the risk of infections in those exposed to vedolizumab vs unexposed. We detected no increased risk.

Assessing Serious Infections in Children Exposed In Utero to Ustekinumab.

Chronic inflammatory conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), psoriasis (PsO), and psoriatic arthritis (PsA), have a high burden among women of reproductive age. There has been significant interest in finding safe ways of controlling disease activity during pregnancy without adversely affecting the pregnancy or offspring.

Ustekinumab Safety in Pregnancy: A Comprehensive Review.

Chronic inflammatory conditions, including inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), psoriasis, and psoriatic arthritis, are prevalent among women of reproductive age; patients with active disease during pregnancy may be at an increased risk of adverse birth outcomes. For this reason, physicians are focused on approaches to controlling disease activity prior to and during pregnancy. The safety profile of many therapies used for these conditions has been relatively well established, though evidence on newer therapies is lacking. Ustekinumab is a relatively new interleukin-12/23 inhibitor approved for IBD, psoriasis, and psoriatic arthritis, whose safety in pregnancy is not yet fully understood. In this comprehensive review, we critically assess the available evidence on ustekinumab in pregnancy across animal studies and human case reports, case series, observational studies, and clinical practice guidelines. We show that, to date, studies have not identified an excess risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes among women exposed to ustekinumab in pregnancy, with few exposed pregnancies and potential for some bias. Clinical guidelines are conflicted regarding whether they recommend continuing or discontinuing ustekinumab, highlighting the paucity of data and need for more research on this issue.

Binaural hearing is impaired in children with hearing loss who use bilateral hearing aids.

This paper asked whether children fitted with bilateral hearing aids (BHA) develop normal perception of binaural cues which are the basis of spatial hearing. Data from children with BHA (n = 26, age = 12.6 ± 2.84 years) were compared to data from a control group (n = 12, age = 12.36 ± 2.83 years). Stimuli were 250 Hz click-trains of 36 ms and a 40 ms consonant-vowel /da/ at 1 Hz presented through ER3A insert-earphones unilaterally or bilaterally. Bilateral stimuli were presented at different interaural level difference (ILD) and interaural timing difference (ITD) conditions. Participants indicated whether the sound came from the left or right side (lateralization) or whether one sound or two could be heard (binaural fusion). BHA children lateralized ILDs similarly to the control group but had impaired lateralization of ITDs. Longer response times relative to controls suggest that lateralization of ITDs was challenging for children with BHA. Most, but not all, of the BHA group were able to fuse click and speech sounds similarly to controls. Those unable to fuse showed particularly poor ITD lateralization. Results suggest that ITD perception is abnormal in children using BHAs, suggesting persistent effects of hearing loss that are not remediated by present clinical rehabilitation protocols.