2023-05-10 00:47:55
A symposium on taking medication during pregnancy, Tuesday, as part of the Acfas congress, gave rise to a “cry from the heart”.
“In the United States, pregnant women have been able to be included in clinical drug trials for more than 20 years,” explained Anick Bérard, specialist in the matter at CHU Sainte-Justine, which organized the symposium. “Medical boards have been asking Health Canada for a decade to remove pregnant women from the category of vulnerable people who should be avoided in clinical trials. But there is no change. This means that we have less data on the effectiveness and risks of drugs during pregnancy. »
This is how clinical trials on vaccines once morest COVID-19 might be done with pregnant women in the United States, observes the Dre Berard.
The symposium enabled us to compare practices in the United States, France, Belgium and Canada. The situation is similar in the United States and Canada, while in France almost all pregnant women take medication, according to the Dre Berard. In Canada, only two-thirds of women take it.
About 16% of Quebec and other Canadian women take antidepressants during pregnancy, most of the time because they were already taking them before. Some antidepressants are associated with a twice as high risk of heart defects for the baby, increasing the risk from 1% to 2%. There is therefore a debate on taking antidepressants during pregnancy for mild to moderate depression, according to the Sainte-Justine researcher.
By comparison, the risk of malformations with thalidomide, an anti-nausea drug used briefly more than 50 years ago, increased 10 times.
The risks associated with antibiotics, drugs for epilepsy, autoimmune diseases and thyroid disorders, as well as other anti-nausea drugs, were also discussed.
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