ABC World News reported in one of its “healthy living,” segments that “some over the counter painkillers are a risk to pregnant women and their unborn children, doubling the risk of miscarriage.” ABC explained, “This is a study out of Canada that looked at 4,700 women that had a miscarriage, and they compared those to 47,000 who did not. What they found was that the women who had miscarriages, in the first 20 weeks, were more than twice as likely to take a certain type of painkiller. This is a painkiller called NSAID. It’s in Aleve, Motrin, Ibuprofen.” Besser added that pregnant women should “think about taking Tylenol, acetaminophen” for pain.
NBC Nightly News reported, “While the experts keep trying to learn more about what causes miscarriages, and how to prevent them, a new study of 47,000 women has found one more piece of the puzzle that women may want to consider, and it involves some big brand name pain relievers that are in so many of our homes in this country.” NBC added, “Some of the most popular over-the-counter pain relievers, so-called NSAIDs, could be cause for concern early in pregnancy including ibuprofen…and naproxyn.” These drugs “already carry warnings against use late in pregnancy, but the study out today from the team of University of Montreal, shows that taken early in pregnancy during the first 20 weeks, the drugs may more than double the risk of miscarriage.”
The Los Angeles Times reports in its “Booster Shots” blog, “The greatest risk was among women who had taken diclofenac, and the lowest among women who had taken rofecoxib alone.” It also notes that “some previous studies on the connection between non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and miscarriage or birth defects have shown a link,” including “a 2003 study in the British Medical Journal” that linked NSAIDs “with an 80% greater risk of miscarriage,” though “a subsequent BMJ study found the data flawed.” The current study is published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Medscape says that the study “analyzed associations between different types and dosages of nonaspirin NSAIDs and spontaneous abortion using conditional logistic regression, with adjustment for confounding variables,” and found “no apparent dose-response effect.”
HealthDay reports that “Individual drugs had different risks associated with them, the highest being diclofenac, which tripled the risk, naproxen (Aleve), which involved a 2.64-times increased risk and ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), which carried about double the risk.”
Reuters adds celecoxib to the list of NSAIDS, and notes that the study also suggests that NSAIDs may interfere with prostaglandin production.
From the American Association for Justice news release.
