Impact of Sjögren’s syndrome on maternal and fetal outcomes following pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies published between years 2007–2022

To show the impact of Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) on maternal and fetal outcomes following pregnancy.

We performed a literature search based on PubMed, Web of science, Wan fang, China National Knowledge Infrastructure and ProQuest databases from 1 January 2007 to 6 November 2022. Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations approach was used to assess the certainty of the evidence. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated using a random-effect, generic inverse variance method of DerSimonian and Laird. Trial sequential analyses were performed by TSA 0.9.

Nine studies with 2341 patients and 2472 pregnancies with SS were included in our analysis. This current analysis showed pregnancy hypertension and preeclampsia/eclampsia to be significantly higher in pregnant women with SS compared to pregnant women without SS (OR: 1.65, 95% CI: 1.04–2.63; P = 0.03), (OR: 2.06, 95% CI: 1.16–3.65; P = 0.01) respectively. Cesarean section, thromboembolic disease, premature rupture of membranes, and spontaneous abortion were also significantly higher in the SS women with OR: 2.07, 95% CI: 1.48–2.88; P < 0.0001, OR: 9.45, 95% CI: 1.99–44.87; P = 0.005, OR: 1.36, 95% CI: 1.13–1.64; P = 0.001, OR: 9.30, 95% CI: 4.13–20.93; P < 0.00001, respectively. Significantly higher premature births were observed with infants who were born from SS mothers (OR: 2.19, 95% CI: 1.54–3.12; P < 0.0001). Infants defined as ‘small for gestational age/intrauterine growth restriction’ and ‘weighing < 2500 g’ were also significantly higher in patients suffering from SS (OR: 2.26, 95% CI: 1.38–3.70; P = 0.001), (OR: 3.84, 95% CI: 1.39–10.61; P = 0.009) respectively. In addition, live birth significantly favored infants who were born from mothers without SS (OR: 21.53, 95% CI: 8.36–55.44; P < 0.00001). Subgroup analysis by sample size revealed that pregnancy hypertension risk has significantly increased in small cohort (OR: 2.74, 95%CI: 1.45–5.18), and a slight increase was found in population-based studies (OR: 1.14, 95%CI: 0.91–1.43). In both small cohorts and population-based researches, cesarean section was significantly higher in SS (OR: 2.13, 95% CI: 1.29, 3.52; OR: 1.85, 95% CI: 1.29–2.64, respectively). The number of infants with intrauterine growth restriction did not grow in the population-based researches (OR: 2.07, 95%CI: 0.92–4.66) although there has been an increase in small reports (OR: 2.53, 95%CI: 1.16–5.51). Subgroup analysis was conducted on the basis of study location (not Asian vs. Asian countries) indicated that cesarean section was significantly higher in SS in both countries (OR: 1.69, 95% CI: 1.31–2.18; OR: 3.37, 95% CI: 2.39–4.77, respectively).

This meta-analysis has shown SS to have a high impact on maternal and fetal outcomes following pregnancy.