19 Dec Does Zofran (ondansetron) for Nausea & Vomiting Cause Birth Defects?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Krista Huybrechts
Krista F. Huybrechts, MS PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA 02120
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Pregnant women often experience nausea and vomiting, particularly during the first trimester. Early treatment is recommended to relieve symptoms and prevent progression to hyperemesis gravidarum. Although not formally approved for this indication, ondansetron is the most frequently prescribed treatment for nausea and vomiting in pregnancy in the US: 22% of pregnant women reportedly used ondansetron in the US in 2014. Despite this common use, the available evidence on the fetal safety of ondansetron is limited and conflicting, and the possibility of a doubling in risk of cleft palate and cardiac malformations has been raised.
We therefore evaluated the association between ondansetron exposure during the first trimester of pregnancy, the period of organogenesis, and the risk of congenital malformations in a cohort of 1,816,414,publicly insured pregnancies using the nationwide Medicaid Analytic eXtract data for 2000-2013. A total of 88,467 women (4.9%) were exposed to ondansetron during the first trimester. After adjusting for a broad range of potential confounding variables, we found no association with cardiac malformations (RR = 0.99; 95% CI, 0.93 – 1.06) and congenital malformations overall (RR = 1.01; 95% CI, 0.98 – 1.05). For oral clefts, we found a 24% increase in risk (RR=1.24; 95% CI, 1.03 – 1.48), which corresponds to an absolute risk of 2.7 per 10,000 births (95% CI, 0.2 – 5.2 per 10,000 births). These findings were consistent across sensitivity analyses, conducted to address potential misclassification and confounding bias.
MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: These results suggest that ondansetron does not meaningfully increase the risk of congenital malformations, although a small increase in the risk of oral clefts cannot be excluded. These results will hopefully provide reassurance to pregnant women who experience nausea and vomiting in pregnancy and need to make a risk-benefit trade off regarding treatment.
MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work?
Response: It will be important to assess the safety of ondansetron with respect to other pregnancy outcomes. Additional data regarding the comparative effectiveness of the drugs used to treat nausea and vomiting in pregnancy are also needed.
Please see the paper for authors’ disclosures.
Citation:
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Last Updated on December 19, 2018 by Marie Benz MD FAAD