New Risk Found for Heart Medicine; After Use in First Trimester, Some Blood-Pressure Drugs Tied to More Birth Defects

In an accompanying editorial in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, Jan M. Friedman, a geneticist at the University of British Columbia, expressed surprise that the first-trimester birth defects had taken so long to emerge. "This is not the last word on the subject," Dr. Frie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Wall Street journal. Eastern edition
Main Author Seward, Zachary M
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, N.Y Dow Jones & Company Inc 08.06.2006
EditionEastern edition
Subjects
Birth defects
Blood pressure
Diuretics
Drug therapy
Fetuses
Health risk assessment
Hypertension
Medicine
Pregnancy
Prescription drugs
Womens health
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Summary:In an accompanying editorial in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, Jan M. Friedman, a geneticist at the University of British Columbia, expressed surprise that the first-trimester birth defects had taken so long to emerge. "This is not the last word on the subject," Dr. Friedman wrote, "but it is shocking to realize that it is almost the first." The FDA said it would release a public health advisory but wouldn't change the medication's "black box" warning, which cautions of serious risks only in the second and third trimesters. Robert J. Temple, director of medical policy at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said, "People who are in a situation where they're thinking about getting pregnant should talk to their physician about taking an alternative medicine to treat high blood pressure."
ISSN:0099-9660