A team of researchers from Michigan have found the use of steroids in very premature infants with birth weights of less than 500 grams leads to a 1.6 times increased risk for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and a 1.7 times greater chance for advanced ROP.
For the study, researchers examined data from 1,472 neonates discharged from 167 Neonatal Intensive Care Units between 1996 and 2013. The research team reportedly found the incidence of ROP was significantly higher in steroid-treated infants (80.5 percent) than in non-treated infants (66.8 percent), and advanced stage ROP incidence was also higher in the treated group (35.3 percent) compared to the non-treated group (21.1 percent).
The study was recently published in the Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS).
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Source: Elsevier Health Sciences