The same corticosteroid that could help decrease the mortality rate among infants could also cause cerebral palsy.

According to as study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the corticosteroid betamethasone, when given in repeat doses could possibly cause cerebral palsy infants.

Betamethasone is administered in pregnant women at risk of delivering premature babies, to hasten their lung development.

Obstetricians-gynecologists frequently administer repeated doses of steroids of up to 10 to 11 times in a week. However, a NIH panel was concerned with the safety of the treatment that they advised medical practitioners to limit multiple doses to patients enrolled in clinical trials.

The study, performed by the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Network, followed infants at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and 12 other sites.

The study tries to examine the long-term effects of the treatment in children.

Results showed that 6 out of 248 children whose mothers were given corticosteroids were diagnosed to have cerebral palsy while only 1 out of 238 children who were given placebo developed cerebral palsy.

Dr. Ronal Wapner, lead author of the study, concluded that multiple weekly courses of steroids should be avoided since it does not have a beneficial long-term effect and may possibly be more harmful to the child.

According to Science Daily:

Repeated courses of a drug that is used to improve the survival of unborn premature babies also may increase the risk of cerebral palsy in those children, according to results from a multi-center study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and led by Ronald Wapner, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology, Columbia University Medical Center and attending obstetrician and gynecologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia.