MedWire News: Exposure to H2-blockers such as famotidine, cimetidine, and ranitidine during pregnancy does not pose significant risks for the fetus, show results from a large collaborative cohort study.
Rafael Gorodischer (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel) and co-authors linked a database of medications dispensed to all women registered in Clalit Health Services in the Southern district of Israel during 1998-2007 to databases containing maternal and infant hospitalization records for the Soroka university Medical Center during the same period.
Of the 84,823 infants born during the study period, 1,148 (1.4 percent) infants were exposed to H2-blockers during the first trimester of pregnancy, with most exposed to famotidine (n = 878), followed by ranitidine (n = 276) and cimetidine (n = 28).
The rate of congenital malformations in infants exposed to H2-blockers during the first trimester of pregnancy was comparable to that for unexposed infants (5.7 vs 5.3 percent) after controlling for parity, maternal age, ethnicity, maternal diabetes, smoking, and peripartum fever.
Furthermore, overall exposure to H2-blockers during the first, second, and third trimesters was not associated with an increased risk for premature delivery, perinatal mortality, low Apgar scores, or delivery of a low or very low birth weight infant.
“These results, added to other reported smaller controlled studies, indicate that H2-blockers represent a safe option in the treatment of acid reflux in pregnant women,” say the authors.
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