FDA Will Study Effect of Prescription Drugs on Pregnant Women

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The Food and Drug Administration has announced that it will begin to study the effects of prescription drugs on pregnant women, a population that is usually not considered in clinical drug trials.

The Medication Exposure in Pregnancy Risk Evaluation Program (MEPREP) will be a collaborative effort between the HMO Research Network’s Center for Education and Research in Therapeutics. The groups will gather and study data from 11 health plan-affiliated research sites. Together, the sites may access data from 1,000,000 births from 2001 to 2007.

“Many of the mothers associated with these births likely used medication during their pregnancies and now, with the program in place, the FDA and participating researchers have a systematic and timely way of retrieving information from this network,” the agency said in a news release.

Since a majority of pregnant women takes prescription drugs, the study hopes to provide the necessary medical knowledge to increase the safety and health of both the mother and the child.

Kevin Dugan
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