More Pregnant Women on Blood Pressure Drugs: Study TUESDAY,
Sept. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Growing numbers of pregnant women
are on medicines to treat high blood pressure, new research
indicates. "The reasons for the increase are not entirely
clear," said study author Dr. Brian Bateman, an assistant
professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. While it's
important to manage high blood pressure during pregnancy,
certain drugs are preferred due to their safety profile. In the
study, Bateman found that many women were not on those drugs.
"We need to do more research to figure out which medicines are
the best for insuring a good pregnancy outcome for both mother
and baby," he said. The findings are published in the October
issue of Hypertension. Bateman and his colleagues examined
Medicaid claims from 2000 to 2007, looking for the records of
women who had completed pregnancies. Of the more than 1 million
women, nearly 48,500 (4.4 percent) took blood pressure medicines
during pregnancy. From the start of the s