VANCOUVER — Funding a program that provides pregnant and breastfeeding women with evidence-based research on drug safety should be a priority for the Canadian government, say doctors citing the closure of such a service after nearly 35 years. About 20 per cent of expectant moms have chronic issues, they said, adding tens of thousands of women annually relied on Motherisk, which conducted large-scale laboratory and clinical research in reproductive drug safety. “Over the past 30 years, the prevalence of prescription drug use in pregnancy has increased by nearly 70 per cent,” they said. “More than 90 per cent of pregnant women will use at least one prescription or over-the-counter drug during pregnancy and about half of breast-feeding women will continue to use prescription medications. “This could be achieved by affiliation with an established research institute and with federal support to guarantee financial independence from industry.”The problem we have is that very few medications are formally tested on women, let alone pregnant women.

Source: Huffington Post May 27, 2019 11:37 UTC