American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
ResearchObstetricsAcetaminophen use during pregnancy: effects on risk for congenital abnormalities
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
Data were obtained from the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC), a nation-wide study of 100,000 pregnant women and their offspring recruited between 1996 and 2003 (www.ssi.dk/sw9653.asp). Pregnant women were approached at the first prenatal care visit to a general practitioner, which usually took place after 6-10 weeks of gestation. Approximately 50% of all general practitioners in Denmark participated in the recruitment and approximately 60% of eligible women accepted the invitation and signed
Results
We identified 3784 liveborn singletons (4.3%) who had 5847 congenital abnormalities included in our study. The majority of children with an abnormality had an isolated congenital abnormality (n = 2460, 65%) and 1324 (35%) had 2 or more. Pregnant women who had a child with a congenital abnormality were similar to women in the cohort as a whole, in terms of demographic and lifestyle factors such as age, socioeconomic status, presence of a partner, and exposure to alcohol, tobacco, or drugs of
Comment
We believe this large prospective cohort study provides the most accurate evaluation of a potential teratogenic effect of acetaminophen to date. Our results are reassuring and rule out with some certainty a significant increase in the prevalence of frequent congenital abnormalities associated with use of this drug. We cannot rule out that the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy increases the prevalence of specific but infrequent congenital abnormalities, ie, congenital abnormalities of the
Acknowledgments
We thank Inge Eisensee (Danish Epidemiology Science Centre, University of Aarhus) for dataset preparation and Paco Fernández and Estel Plana (Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology) for their support in data management and analysis. We are especially grateful to the physicians, nurses, interviewers, and mothers without whose participation the study would not have been possible.
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Cited by (0)
This study was supported by a major grant from the Danish National Research Foundation, with additional support from the Pharmacy Foundation, the Egmont Foundation, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, and the Health Foundation.
Cite this article as: Rebordosa C, Kogevinas M, Horváth-Puhó E, et al. Acetaminophen use during pregnancy: effects on risk for congenital abnormalities. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2008;198:178.e1-178.e7.