Prescription drugs, abortions linked

MONTREAL, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- Half of expectant mothers taking prescription drugs that may harm the fetus terminate their pregnancies, Canadian researchers found.

The researchers examined data from the Quebec Pregnancy Registry on 109,344 women ages15-45 and found 6,871 pregnant women consumed one of 11 prescription drugs known to be harmful to fetuses through the first, second or third trimester.

Of those women, 3,229 had an abortion, 6 percent had a miscarriage and 8.2 percent gave birth to a child with major congenital malformations.

"I never expected such results and I was extremely surprised," study senior author Anick Berard of the University of Montreal said in a statement.

Berard, currently a visiting professor at the Universite Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, said she is concerned there were 11,400 prescriptions for dangerous medicines to treat acne, anxiety and epilepsy that increase the risk of malformations by 30 percent yet are freely available without proper risk management.

Some drugs, Berard said, may be overused -- such as benzodiazepine to treat symptoms of anxiety -- but anti-epileptics may be necessary.

"In those cases, the pregnancy must be carefully planned and medication use must be at a strict minimum during the first trimester," Berard stressed. "And the expectant mother must meet with her physician regularly."

The findings are published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.