Drugs and pregnancy: A survey of 374 women in France

Objectives. - The objectives of this study were to describe drug use during pregnancy in a context of acute and chronic diseases during pregnancy. An additional aim was to analyze the maternal socio-demographic and lifestyle factors associated with medication use in pregnancy. Methods. - Cross-sectional, web-based descriptive study conducted among French women using a 33-item web-based questionnaire. Multiple logistic regression analyzes were performed to assess the association between socio-demographic/lifestyle factors and medication use in pregnancy. Results. - A total of 374 women completed the questionnaire. Of these, 75.1% (n =280) and 12.6% (n=47) used medication for treatment for acute and chronic diseases, respectively. A total of 68.9% (n = 258) of women surveyed have deliberately avoided taking non -prescribed drugs when they were pregnant. Non -users of folic acid were less often taking medications (78.9%) than folic acid users (89.5%) OR = 0.44 [0.24; 0.79]. Conclusion. - More than eight out of ten women have taken medication during pregnancy especially analgesics. The maternal socio-demographic and lifestyle factors do not seem to impact on the use of medication during pregnancy. (C) 2016 Societe francaise de pharmacologie et de therapeutique. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.