Drug use in pregnancy: A review

Drugs play an important role in improving health and promoting well-being. However to produce desired effect, they have to be safe, efficacious and have to be used rationally. Every pregnant women is advised to take supplements which include vitamins and minerals for the healthy development of the fetus and mother. In case, of any co-morbidity occurrence use of non-supplements that is medications use becomes essential to treat the underlying medical condition.
The appropriate medication use in pregnancy should follow the USFDA drug risk category. This classification explains about the A, B, C, D, X and N categories which specify the safety profile of various medications of each category, where drugs of category A are considered the safest and category X drugs are contraindicated in pregnancy or can be also called as teratogenic drugs. Hence, this provides physicians better prescribing guidelines. Some women may develop medical complications in pregnancy such as asthma, hypertension, epilepsy, gestational diabetes etc which would require continuous and episodic treatment. This requires the following up of USFDA drug risk category for safe prescribing of drugs so to cause no harm to the mother and fetus.
Also, immunizing the pregnant women with vaccination plays an important role in protecting the mother and fetus during pregnancy. However, live-virus vaccines should be avoided in women who are or may be in pregnancy process, such as rubella vaccine and varicella vaccine. The decision to treat pregnancy-associated conditions should be based factors such as safety, symptom severity, and potential for quality-of-life improvement.