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Improvement of lung function during pregnancy

Question
In case of a friend of mine, her lung function improved about 13% due to a pregnancy. What kind of experience do you have with pregnant women? It lasted for about 11 months until the lung function returned to the level before pregnancy.
Answer
Dear questioner,
you adress to the CF-expert team, therefore I assume that the friend you talk about suffers from CF. My answer assumes this initial situation.
You ask, how it can be explained that lung function values of a CF patient improve during a pregnancy and after furhter 11 months after delivery have returned back to the values before pregnancy.
The clinical experience shows that the course of lung function during pregnancy of CF patients depend very much on the initial values and the nutritional status before the onset of pregnancy and on the susceptibility for infection during pregnancy. The better "the start", thus higher lung function values, better body weight and less acute infections, the better the lung function in the course of pregnancy. Also hormonal changes that are due to pregnancy play a certain role at the influence on an improvement of the lung function. This can be especially strongly pronounced in women with an additional bronchial asthma.
Furthermore, it can not be excluded that the compliance to therapy of the expectant mother improves, as in connection to the growing responsibility for the own child the motivation to follow therapies is often intensified.
Also the state of health after delivery and therefore the lung function depend on many factors in young mothers. In case it came to a temporary improvement of the lung function during pregnancy, as in your friend's case, the anew loss of the values can depend e.g. on the again actual hormonal changes, on the fact that the newborn is brest-fed, on the exhausting care of the child, on the loss of time for own therapies and on many other individual factors.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Christina Smaczny
12.06.2013