Pregnant individuals with rheumatic diseases who were exposed to disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs did not experience severe morbidity, according to data presented at ACR Convergence 2025.
“The objective was to determine whether DMARD use was associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes in individuals with rheumatic conditions,” said Shenthuraan Tharmarajah, a PhD student at the University of Toronto.
“The DMARDs that are used to treat these chronic conditions are not well studied in the setting of pregnancy.”
According to Tharmarajah, pregnancy can impact drug absorption, metabolism and clearance. “There are unknown risks to mother and baby,” he said.
For their analysis, Tharmarajah and colleagues included 836 pregnant individuals with rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and/or ankylosing spondylitis, culled from a population-based health care administrative claims database in Ontario.
Author’s summary: Treatment with DMARDs during pregnancy in rheumatic disease cases did not show an increase in severe maternal or neonatal morbidity in the studied cohort, suggesting no clear association with harmful pregnancy outcomes in this dataset.