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(Ivanhoe Newswire) - Malaria in pregnancy can kill both mother and child, yet there has been very little research on how to treat it, according to a team of experts.
The medical profession has been rightfully very cautious about giving newly developed drugs to pregnant women, for fear that they might damage the unborn baby, study authors were quoted as saying. The result has been new medicines carrying a prescribing caveat that they not be used during pregnancy.
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This situation leads to a dangerous catch-22: new medicines that might be life-saving are not prescribed in pregnancy, according to researcher Nicholas White of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok, Thailand. Recognizing the dilemma, regulatory authorities in developed countries have begun to encourage pharmaceutical companies to gather information on the use of new drugs in pregnancy. However, in the developing world there are few studies that apply to pregnant women and treating tropical infections like malaria.
Establishing the safety of new malaria medicines in pregnancy should be a priority, according to White and colleagues: International agencies and funders need to provide adequate support for quality studies in pregnancy aid, in an increasingly litigious climate, to underwrite the liabilities.
SOURCE: PLoS Biology, published online June 16, 2008
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