ReviewInternational breastfeeding journal2022
Breastfeeding, pregnancy, medicines, neurodevelopment, and population databases: the information desert.
Review in International breastfeeding journal, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Drug Utilization Studies in Pregnant Women for Newly Licensed Medicinal Products: A Contribution from IMI ConcePTION.Journal of pregnancy · 2024Pooled it
- Performance evaluation of large language models in real-world perinatal medication consultations: a cross-sectional study.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2026Article
- Mortality amongst European children with congenital anomalies: Associations with socio-economic status in the EUROLINKCAT cohort.PloS one · 2026Observational
- Self-medication and knowledge of pregnant women about the use of medication during pregnancy in the cities of Rijeka and Zadar, Croatia.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- Clinical lactation studies. Acting on key recommendations over the last decade.npj women's health · 2025Review
- Pragmatic and contextualized methods selection for safety assessment of infant systemic exposure through human milk: the Milk4baby decision tree approach - a contribution from the concePTION project.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- Characterisation and validation of lactation information from structured electronic health records for use in pharmacoepidemiological studies.Paediatric and perinatal epidemiology · 2024Article
- The investigation of serum phenylalanine levels based on infant feeding method: a cross-sectional study of children less than two years old with phenylketonuria (PKU).International breastfeeding journal · 2024Article
- The most common medications dispensed to lactating persons: An electronic health record-based approach.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2023Article
- Where are the data linking infant outcomes, breastfeeding and medicine exposure? A systematic scoping review.PloS one · 2023Article
- Development and design of the BELpREG registration system for the collection of real-world data on medication use in pregnancy and mother-infant outcomes.Frontiers in drug safety and regulation · 2023Article
- The value of midwifery counseling during lactation as a key factor of pharmacovigilance.European journal of midwifery · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe pharmacoepidemiology of the long-term benefits and harms of medicines in pregnancy and breastfeeding has received little attention. The impact of maternal medicines on children is increasingly recognised as a source of avoidable harm. The focus of attention has expanded from congenital anomalies to include less visible, but equally important, outcomes, including cognition, neurodevelopmental disorders, educational performance, and childhood ill-health. Breastfeeding, whether as a source of medicine exposure, a mitigator of adverse effects or as an outcome, has been all but ignored in pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance: a significant 'blind spot'. WHOLE-POPULATION DATA ON BREASTFEEDING: WHY WE NEED THEM: Optimal child development and maternal health necessitate breastfeeding, yet little information exists to guide families regarding the safety of medicine use during lactation. Breastfeeding initiation or success may be altered by medicine use, and breastfeeding may obscure the true relationship between medicine exposure during pregnancy and developmental outcomes. Absent or poorly standardised recording of breastfeeding in most population databases hampers analysis and understanding of the complex relationships between medicine, pregnancy, breastfeeding and infant and maternal health. The purpose of this paper is to present the arguments for breastfeeding to be included alongside medicine use and neurodevelopmental outcomes in whole-population database investigations of the harms and benefits of medicines during pregnancy, the puerperium and postnatal period. We review: 1) the current situation, 2) how these complexities might be accommodated in pharmacoepidemiological models, using antidepressants and antiepileptics as examples; 3) the challenges in obtaining comprehensive data.
conclusionsThe scarcity of whole-population data and the complexities of the inter-relationships between breastfeeding, medicines, co-exposures and infant outcomes are significant barriers to full characterisation of the benefits and harms of medicines during pregnancy and breastfeeding. This makes it difficult to answer the questions: 'is it safe to breastfeed whilst taking this medicine', and 'will this medicine interfere with breastfeeding and/ or infants' development'?
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.