Safety Study of Medications During Pregnancy

(January 1, 2010) - Pregnant women often take prescription drugs during their pregnancies. (Read about "Healthy Pregnancy") Unfortunately, there has been very little study done on the effects of drugs during pregnancy. A new research program called the Medication Exposure in Pregnancy Risk Evaluation Program (MEPREP) will fund research to study the effects of prescription medications used during pregnancy.

About two-thirds of women who deliver a baby have taken at least one prescription medication (Read about "Medicine Safety") during pregnancy according to a journal article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. There are very few clinical trials that test the safety of medications in pregnancy due to concerns about the health of the mother and child.

To overcome the challenges presented by the lack of clinical trial data about the use of medications during pregnancy, the research program will link healthcare information for mothers and their babies in each of the participating research sites. Collectively, the 11 participating sites have health care information for about 1 million births over the past seven years. Many of the mothers associated with these births likely used medication during their pregnancies and now, with the program in place, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and participating researchers have a systematic and timely way of retrieving information from this network.

"This collaborative effort creates a unique resource to study the effects of medication in pregnant women and their children," said Gerald Dal Pan, M.D., director of the Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "Results of these studies will provide valuable information for patients and physicians when making decisions about medication during pregnancy."