Frequency and type of medications and vaccines used during pregnancy

Providing safe pharmacotherapy for pregnant women is challenging. Nearly all pregnant women are prescribed or inadvertently receive medication during their pregnancy. We reviewed the scientific literature to identify the specific medications and vaccines that are most often used during pregnancy and described them by category and indication. Our interest was to update the research before the implementation of the recently released FDA labeling rule for pregnancy and lactation that eliminates the use of pregnancy categories in product labels. Our results confirm that most products taken during pregnancy are over-the-counter or in the former FDA pregnancy categories A or B. However, medications taken prior to pregnancy recognition (inadvertent exposures) and those prescribed for chronic illness such as allergies, depression, and pain are of concern. A better understanding of medication and vaccine utilization during pregnancy may help clinicians reduce inadvertent first trimester exposures and improve the safe and effective treatment of pregnant women.