30 Apr Protect the health of pregnant people and their children by including them in research

By Alexander M. Capron and Anna Mastroianni, STAT

Imagine having to make this decision: Your health care provider recommends that you take a specific medicine for an illness or condition but then tells you it hasn’t been tested in people like you. Do you take the medication, or refuse it?

That’s the position the 3.5 million women who give birth each year in the U.S. are in when being counseled about taking medicines.

Pregnant people have the same diseases as others, including depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and HIV. And pregnancy can cause serious conditions that require the use of medicine. Up to 90% of pregnant people take one or more drugs during pregnancy, or were taking some kind of medication when they became pregnant. Read more…