
Metformin Found Safe in Pregnant Women With Diabetes
Metformin Found Safe in Pregnant Women With Diabetes
Adverse outcomes tied to diabetes, not the drug
by Jeff Minerd Jeff Minerd, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today
This article is a collaboration between MedPage Today and:
Note that this observational study suggests that women who take metformin during pregnancy have no increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, beyond those that arise through the presence of diabetes.
Be aware that the authors did not analyze a group of women with diabetes but not treated with metformin.
Pregnant women who took metformin for pregestational diabetes had a higher risk for adverse outcomes, but this risk was linked to the diabetes, not the drug, researchers reported.
Pregnant women on metformin for other indications, such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), had no significantly increased risk for poor outcomes, Alice Panchaud, PhD, of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and colleagues wrote online in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology .
Compared with a matched reference group of pregnant women not taking metformin, metformin users with diabetes were nearly four times more likely to give birth to an infant with major birth defects (odds ratio 3.95; 95% CI 1.77 to 9.41). However, there was no significantly increased risk for pregnant women on metformin for other reasons (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.18 to 2.81), the study found.
Similarly, women taking metformin for pre-gestational diabetes had more than twice the risk for spontaneous abortion or stillbirth (OR 2.51; 95% CI 1.44 to 4.36), but women taking metformin for othe
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