Pregnancy and the Information Gap

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Doctors are regularly faced with this complete lack of information about the medicines they're prescribing. I'm wondering how doctors manage and treat their patients when they're faced with this huge information gap? So clinations have to sit down with the patients that they care for and say we've got these medicines. We don't really know if they're completely safe and effective in pregnancy, but we need to treat your underlying health condition,. If we don't, the pregnancy is likely to have adverse consequences. It's a really difficult choice.

A recent report on the exclusion of pregnant and breastfeeding women in clinical trials found that both women and babies in the UK are “dying needlessly” from a lack of suitable medications. Over the past 40 years, only two new medicines have been approved for use in pregnancy, leaving patients to weigh up unknown risks and make difficult decisions about their own health and that of their babies. Science editor Ian Sample talks to Peter Brocklehurst, professor of women’s health at the University of Birmingham, about why pregnant women are so often excluded from pharmaceutical research and how we can make sure they too benefit from modern medicine. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod