If you take time to read the labels of many prescription drugs and over the counter drugs, you will see warnings directed at women who are pregnant or plan to get pregnant. The warnings for expecting moms are the result of an epidemic that took place in the post-World War II years.

For a variety of reasons, millions of people had trouble sleeping and ended up being prescribed a sleep aid called thalidomide. Within a few years, there was an increase in the number of babies born with a variety of birth defects, as reported:

In a post-war era when sleeplessness was prevalent, thalidomide was marketed to a world hooked on tranquilizers and sleeping pills. At the time, one out of seven Americans took them regularly.

The demand for sedatives was even higher in some European markets, and the presumed safety of thalidomide, the only non-barbiturate sedative known at the time, gave the drug massive appeal. Sadly, tragedy followed its release, catalyzing the beginnings of the rigorous drug approval and monitoring systems in place at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today…

In 1961, McBride began to associate this so-called harmless compound with severe birth defects in the babies he delivered. The drug interfered with the babies’ normal development, causing many of them to be born with phocomelia, resulting in shortened, absent, or flipper-like limbs…

Many of the kids born with birth defects were sadly called ‘thalidomide babies’.

Ever since then, the FDA and other health research agencies have taken extra measures to test many products for possible harmful side effects that would impact a pregnant woman and/or her baby. However, sometimes a drug slips through the screening process only to find out too late that it does have harmful side effects on the unborn. Such is the case with a commonly used antibiotic, as reported:

A common antibiotic has been linked to a higher risk of birth defects, according to a new study.

The study, published in the medical journal BMJ, suggests women who were prescribed macrolides during the first three months of pregnancy had an increased risk of birth defects compared to those who were prescribed penicillin.

They’re used to treat infections and most often prescribed when a patient is allergic to penicillin.

The findings were that prescribing macrolides, which include erythromycin, clarithromycin, and azithromycin, to pregnant women increased the risk of major malformations to 28 per 1,000 births compared to 18 per 1,000 births with penicillin.

Specifically, the risk of cardiac malformations was higher.

Therefore, any and all women who are pregnant or planning on getting pregnant, need to be aware of the possible risk of taking any of the macrolide group of antibiotics. While the rate of only 28 birth defects out of 1,000 may not seem that dangerous, you need to ask if your baby’s life is worth the risk? Are you willing to gamble with his or her health?