Pregnant women in Canada have a new place to look for evidence-based information on the safety of prescription medications with today's (November 19) launch of the Healthy Pregnancy Hub. The new site includes a bilingual library, infographics, videos and podcasts, as well as a search function.
The site is based on research from the Canadian Mother-Child Cohort, which includes data from 500,000 Alberta women who gave birth to 900,000 babies between 2005 and 2023. The cohort examines gestational medication use and the frequency of prematurity, low birth weight, major malformations and multiple births in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec.
Nearly 70 per cent of pregnant women take medications, but there is little clinical trial evidence available about their impact on this population because pregnant women are usually excluded as clinical trial subjects, according to Alberta principal investigator Padma Kaul.
