Researchers surveyed 1,120 women about common problems they
experienced during pregnancy and whether they thought medications to
treat these issues were harmful or beneficial.
Overall, about 76 percent of the women reported taking medication
for at least one of eight common conditions during pregnancy
including nausea, heartburn, constipation, colds, urinary tract
infections, neck or pelvic pain, headaches and sleeping problems.
But for some problems, many women didn’t take medications, even when
drugs might not be harmful or forgoing treatment might be dangerous,
researchers report in the International Journal of Clinical
Pharmacy, online May 30.
“Many women avoid medications as they fear harming the child,” said
lead study author Michael Twigg, a pharmacy researcher at the
University of East Anglia.
“We don’t want women to avoid medication and suffer unnecessarily
from conditions that can be treated relatively easily,” Twigg added
by email.
To understand how women think about medication use during pregnancy,
Twigg and colleagues analyzed data from an online survey of women in
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Roughly 40 percent of the participants were pregnant when they
completed the survey, while the rest had given birth within the
previous year.
About 17 percent of the women reported having a chronic medical
condition, most often asthma, allergies, depression, anxiety or
thyroid issues.
For common pregnancy issues like nausea, sleep problems and
constipation, women often avoided medication even though there are
certain treatments available that are not considered harmful, the
study found.
Even though about 79 percent of women experienced nausea during
pregnancy, for example, only around 10 percent of them took
medication.
Non-prescription anti-nausea drugs offer an example of how women may
needlessly suffer and potentially allow small problems to escalate
into bigger ones by avoiding treatment, said Angela Lupattelli, a
study coauthor and pharmacy researcher at the University of Oslo in
Norway.
“Nausea and vomiting can be very devastating for women, and it is
very important that women do not become dehydrated or unhealthy as a
result of pregnancy sickness,” Lupattelli added by email.
With sleep, 67 percent of women reported problems but only about 1
percent of them took drugs even though there are some
nonprescription options that are not considered harmful during
pregnancy.
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Roughly 55 percent of women said they suffered from constipation,
but only 19 percent of them turned to medication for relief. In this
case, too, certain medications are thought to be safe during
pregnancy.
Most worrisome, only about 65 percent of women who developed urinary
tract infections during pregnancy took medications, a concern
because these can escalate into kidney infections that can be life
threatening for both mothers and their babies.
“Some untreated conditions such as urinary tract infections
mentioned in the article, but also chronic conditions including
depression, may cause severe complications, endangering the health
of the mother and her unborn child,” said Marleen van Gelder, a
pharmacy researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in the
Netherlands who wasn’t involved in the study.
One problem, of course, is that drug trials exclude pregnant women
for ethical reasons, limiting how much we know about whether many
treatments are truly safe during pregnancy, van Gelder added by
email.
Safety can also vary by trimester, and the benefits and harms of
treatment may depend on the severity of women's symptoms and other
aspects of their pregnancy or medical history, ven Gelder noted.
One limitation of an online study is that the subset of women who
choose to participate may not reflect the broader population, the
authors note. The study team also lacked participants’ medical
records or data on their drug use during pregnancy to assess how the
severity of certain conditions might have influenced the women’s
opinions about medication.
Women should ask a health professional when they have questions
about drugs during pregnancy, Twigg advised.
“The consequences of not discussing appropriate use of medicines
during pregnancy . . . can be serious,” Twigg said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/217ziD9
Int J Clin Pharm 2016.
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