Women planning or expecting a baby should be warned of the dangers of taking opioids, a specialist says in the wake of a study linking the agents to a rise in gastroschisis.

Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have linked birth defect surveillance data from 20 US states with opioid prescriptions data, showing the prevalence of gastroschisis is higher where the script rate is higher than 82.4 per 100 persons per year.

Comparing two five-year periods (2006-10 and 2011-15), they found a 10% rise in cases of gastroschisis in the more recent period — which corresponded with increasing overall opioid use in the same time frame — while US states with high opioid usage had 1.6 times the average rate of the birth defect.

“From 2006 to 2015, a linear increase in the prevalence of gastroschises was observed in three of the four maternal age categories,” the authors wrote.