Risk of pre-term births and major birth defects resulting from paternal intake of COVID-19 medications prior to conception

Table 1 Paternal medication taken around conception and births (singleton and alive), full term, pre-term, and with birth defects in Denmark for birth cohort 1997–2016: summary of data and results of logistic regression model

Medication	ATC code	Births	Full term	Pre-term (%)	Birth defect (%)	Pre-term vs. full term			Birth defect vs. not
Medication	ATC code	1,201,131	1,087,841	86886 (7.40%)	38881 (3.20%)	OR (95% CI)	p-value	Detectable OR^b	OR (95% CI)	p-value	Detectable OR^b
Azithromycin	J01FA10	7278	6721	557 (7.7%)	235 (3.20%)	1.01 (0.93–1.10)	0.77	1.13	0.98 (0.86–1.12)	0.76	1.19
Naproxen	M01AE02	1895	1749	146 (7.7%)	63 (3.30%)	1.01 (0.85–1.20)	0.9	1.26	1.05 (0.82–1.35)	0.69	1.38
Losartan	C09CA01	972	865	69 (7.40%)	43 (4.60%)	1.01 (0.79–1.29)	0.96	1.37	1.3 (0.96–1.77)	0.094	1.55
Dexamethasone	H02AB02 S01BA01 S03BA01	907	838	69 (7.60%)	32 (3.50%)	1.05 (0.82–1.34)	0.72	1.38	1.11 (0.78–1.58)	0.57	1.57
Chloroquine	P01BA01	849	789	60 (7.10%)	30 (3.50%)	0.98 (0.75–1.28)	0.89	1.39	1.32 (0.91–1.90)	0.14	1.59
Prednisone	H02AB07	289	262	27 (9.30%)	9 (3.10%)	1.26 (0.85–1.87)	0.25	1.70	1 (0.51–1.94)	0.99	2.06
Hydroxychloroquine	P01BA02	101	> 95^a	< 6^a	< 6^a	0.38 (0.12–1.21)	0.1	2.22	1.22 (0.45–3.32)	0.7	3.00

Exposure: male preconception three months
Births, full term, pre-term, and birth defect columns contain counts and percentage in brackets
Logistic model adjusted for age of mother, age of father, birth year, education and income of the father, smoking status of the mother. Birth defects additionally adjusted for gestation age
^aPrivacy regulations of Statistics Denmark do not allow publication of numbers smaller than 6
^bDetectable OR is the alternative hypothesis that can be detected with 80% power given the observed sample size and 2-sided 5% type I error rate without any adjustment of covariates

ISSN: 1756-0500