ArticleEnvironmental health and preventive medicine2022
Association of epidural analgesia during labor with neurodevelopment of children during the first three years: the Japan Environment and Children's Study.
Article in Environmental health and preventive medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association of intrapartum epidural analgesia and oxytocin exposure with offspring autism and neurodevelopment from the Japan Environment and Children's Study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Association of labour epidural analgesia exposure with infant neurodevelopment: secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study.British journal of anaesthesia · 2025Article
- Association between general anesthesia in early childhood and neurodevelopment up to 4 years of age: the Japan Environment and Children's Study.Journal of anesthesia · 2024Article
- Behavioural and neuropsychological outcomes in children exposed in utero to maternal labour epidural analgesia.British journal of anaesthesia · 2024Article
- Association between maternal fish consumption during pregnancy and preterm births: the Japan Environment and Children's Study.Environmental health and preventive medicine · 2023Article
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10 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundEpidural analgesia relives pain during labor. However, the long-term effects on neurodevelopment in children remain unclear. We explored associations between exposure to epidural analgesia during labor and childhood neurodevelopment during the first 3 years of life, in the Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS), a large-scale birth cohort study.
methodsPregnant women were recruited between January 2011 and March 2014, and 100,304 live births of singleton children born at full-term by vaginal delivery, and without congenital diseases were analyzed. Data on mothers and children were collected using a self-administered questionnaires and medical record transcripts. The children's neurodevelopment was repeatedly assessed for five domains (communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal-social), using the Ages and Stages Questionnaires, Third Edition, at six time points from age 6 to 36 months. After adjusting for potential confounders, the associations between exposure to epidural analgesia during labor and children's neurodevelopment at each time point were assessed.
resultsOf the 42,172 children with valid data at all six time points, 938 (2.4%) were born to mothers who received epidural analgesia during labor. Maternal exposure to epidural analgesia was associated with neurodevelopmental delays during the first 3 years after birth. Delay risks in gross and fine motor domains were the greatest at 18 months (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) [95% confidence interval (CI)]: 1.40 [1.06, 1.84] and 1.54 [1.17, 2.03], respectively), subsequently decreasing. Delay risks in communication and problem-solving domains were significantly high at 6 and 24 months, and remained significant at 36 months (aOR [95% CI]: 1.40 [1.04, 1.90] and 1.28 [1.01, 1.61], respectively). Exposure to epidural analgesia was also associated with the incidence of problem solving and personal-social delays from 18 to 24 months old. Neurodevelopmental delay risks, except for communication, were dominant in children born to mothers aged ≥30 years at delivery.
conclusionsThis study showed that maternal exposure to epidural analgesia during labor was associated with neurodevelopmental delays in children during the first 3 years after birth.
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