Painkillers associated with birth defects

Last Updated: 2006-08-28 14:48:40 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who take common painkillers known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) during the first trimester of pregnancy run an increased risk of having a baby with a congenital anomaly, a Canadian study indicates.

NSAIDs include aspirin as well as drugs like ibuprofen or naproxen, and so-called cox-2 inhibitors.

Study co-author Dr. Anick Berard told Reuters Health, "Given the high prevalence of NSAIDS use in the population in general and during pregnancy and that 50 percent of pregnancies are unplanned resulting in inadvertent exposure to medications at the very beginning of the gestational period, more attention should be given to any type of NSAIDS exposure."

Berard, of St. Justine Hospital in Montreal, and colleagues analyzed information on 36,387 women who delivered singleton infants in Quebec between 1997 and 2003.

As reported in the journal Birth Defects Research (Part B), the team identified 93 births with congenital anomalies among 1056 women (8.8 percent) who filled a prescription for NSAIDS in the first trimester of pregnancy compared with 2478 in 35,331 women (7 percent) who did not.

After taking into consideration other risk factors for birth defects, the investigators calculate that the odds of having a baby with any congenital anomaly was twice as high for women who filled a prescription for NSAIDS in the first trimester as for those who did not.

"The strongest and most consistent findings," the team notes, "were seen with the anomalies related to cardiac septal closure" -- that is, the wall separating the left and right chambers of the heart.

The findings are "in accordance with other epidemiologic studies," Berard and colleagues point out.

SOURCE: Birth Defects Research (Part B), September 2006.