There is no definite answer to the question of whether it is safe for a child to take this or that medication during pregnancy. But pregnant women should remember one thing: before starting to take any medication, it is necessary to first consult on this issue with the supervising doctor, even in cases where pregnancy is not indicated as a contraindication to taking the medication. And of course, you should maximally isolate a pregnant woman from taking the drug when it can be avoided, for example, during a cold rise in temperature, before drinking antipyretic pills, you can try to lower the temperature with folk remedies: tea with berries or raspberry leaves, rubbing vinegar water and in other ways.
Deciding to use medication during pregnancy
Before deciding to use any medication during pregnancy, the healthcare provider should warn the pregnant woman about the benefits and risks of this medication. The benefit is that the good will bring taking this drug to a pregnant woman and her baby. Risk is the likelihood and by how much this medicine will harm the growing baby.
There are situations during pregnancy when the use of the medication is selective. If the doctor offers the pregnant woman the drug of choice, the best option, of course, is to endure and refuse to use it. But it also happens that the use of a medication becomes a necessity. Sometimes a woman just needs to take some kind of medication, for example, to treat a throat or bladder infection. There is another variant of the situation in which a woman, even during pregnancy, needs to take a daily medication to control long-term health problems, such as diabetes or asthma. Sometimes drug treatment is required for conditions that have arisen against the background of the pregnancy itself and require urgent elimination. These include toxicosis of pregnant women, the threat of termination of pregnancy, premature birth and fetal overdue.
How the decision to use the drug during pregnancy is determined
Medical professionals receive ready-made information about the use of the drug during pregnancy from annotations to it and special research journals.
In each country there are special departments dealing with the control of medicines, which are allowed or prohibited in that country. These bureaus allow companies to sell safe medicines in the country. And drug companies have to prove to doctors that this or that drug is safe and will not cause physical defects or other problems in the fetus. The effects of such drugs are being tested in pregnant animals.
In order to draw up clear and complete annotations for medicines, the departments collaborate with pharmaceutical companies, although for some medicines there is insufficient information in the annotations about how the medicine affects the development of the fetus.
And the bottom line is that a medicine does not always have the same effect on animals and on humans. In order to minimize the risk due to this difference, the medication should be tested in more than one animal species, for example, only rats, but many. This increases the likelihood that research can show how the drug will ultimately affect the intrauterine development of the human fetus.