By Hannah Schenker
If you are ill and require antibiotics, check which kind they are and make absolutely certain you are not pregnant before you take them. Many common antibiotics are now being linked to an increase in risk of miscarriage – raising the chances between 60% and 100%. If you are trying to conceive, or are suffering through miscarriages, this could be useful to know.
The Canadian study appears in the May 1 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and as reported in The Guardian, a link was found between the use of several classes of antibiotics – macrolides, quinolones, tetracyclines, sulphonamides and metronidazole – with a hugely increased risk of spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage. The antibiotic nitrofurantoin, which is commonly used to treat UTIs in women – something fairly common in pregnant women – was not found to have miscarriage risk, nor was erythromycin.
Researchers looked into almost 9,000 cases of miscarriage from a group of more than 95,000 women between 1998 and 2009, at an average time of 14 weeks into gestation. The women were all between the ages of 15 and 45. Other factors certainly have a part to play – the age of the mother, her health and incidence of infections – which these researchers definitely took into account. Their research found that the women who suffered miscarriage tended to be older, living alone and with multiple health issues and infections.
Dr Anick Berard, from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Universite de Montreal, said: “Infections are prevalent during pregnancy.”
