Drug intoxication during pregnancy: a study with central registries

Abstract

By linking two health registries, one on all infants born and one on hospital discharges, 424 infants were identified born after pregnancies when the mothers had been hospitalized for an intoxication, mainly with drugs. In 126 infants, exposure had occurred during the organ forming period, 99 of them because of suicidal or accidental overdosage of drugs; 70 of these were psychoactive drugs. None of the 70 infants had a congenital malformation, but the upper 95% confidence limit includes a 10% risk increase. An effect on low birth weight rate was seen only after drug complications following medical treatments during weeks 12 to 30. The study supports an earlier study from Hungary that reported that drug intoxication during pregnancy does not carry a substantial teratogenic risk.