One in five pregnant women use drugs that can be harmful to the fetus

Pregnant chromosomal defectsPregnant woman. Photo: pixabay.com

Norwegian studies show that about six out of ten pregnant women use one or more prescription drugs during pregnancy.

 

The studies show that there is an increase in the use of prescription drugs in pregnant women.

“There has been a slight increase in the proportion of pregnant women who use prescription drugs over the past ten years,” says researcher Anders Engeland at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), the first author of the study, based on 600,000 births between 2005 and 2015 and conducted by researchers at the Institute of Public Health and the University of Bergen.

There is also an increase in the proportion of mothers who use potentially harmful medications in the first part of pregnancy. This proportion has increased from 15 to 19 percent in the last ten years.

“There has been an increase in the use of drugs for nausea, which may cause minor malformations in the child. It is important that women are familiar with this,” said the researcher, stressing that most medicines used have no known harm to either child or mother.

 

© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today