Prescription drug use in pregnancy and variations according to prior psychiatric history.

PurposePrescription drug use during pregnancy has increased during the past decades. However, little is known about prescription drug use for high-risk pregnancies. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of redeemed prescriptions in Danish pregnant women with and without previous psychiatric history. MethodsA Danish population-based descriptive study of 981392 pregnancies ending in live-born singletons by 586988 women aged 15 to 55years between 1997 and 2012, of which 113449 (11.6%) pregnancies were by women with a psychiatric history prior to the index pregnancy. All prescription drugs redeemed during pregnancy were identified, and dispensing patterns among the women were reported by therapeutic classes of drugs, calendar year of childbirth, and trimester. ResultsOverall, women with psychiatric history prior to pregnancy were more likely to fill a prescription (75.8%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 75.5-76.0%), compared with women with no psychiatric history (64.5%; 95% CI, 64.4-64.6%). The difference was observed even when psychotropic drug use was excluded and in all therapeutic classes except for antineoplastic and immunomodulating drugs. The most commonly prescribed drugs were anti-infectives. Approximately 44.7% (95% CI, 44.5-45.0%) of women with psychiatric history and 31.3% (95% CI, 31.2-31.4%) of women with no psychiatric history redeemed more than one therapeutic class of drugs. ConclusionsWomen with a psychiatric history were more likely to redeem prescriptions during pregnancy across almost all drug classes, especially anti-infectives. Two thirds of all women redeemed at least one prescription drug during pregnancy and one third more than one drug class.