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Safety of Psychotropic Drugs in Pregnancy and Breastfeeding

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Pharmacovigilance in Psychiatry

Abstract

Pharmacovigilance studies are vital to our understanding of the safety of medications in pregnancy, but great care must be taken in the analysis and interpretation of observational data to avoid problems with confounding and bias. Data on drug excretion in breast milk and possible effects of the breastfed infant often stem from case reports or small case series, making the generalization of the results a challenge. This chapter reviews the safety of psychotropic drugs in pregnant and breastfeeding women and discusses methodological issues that have to be dealt with in the interpretation of published data.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Pharmacology, St. Olav University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway

    Olav Spigset

  2. Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children’s and Women’s Health, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Olav Spigset

  3. Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety Research Group, School of Pharmacy, PharmaTox Strategic Research Initiative, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Hedvig Nordeng

  4. Division of Mental Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway

    Hedvig Nordeng

Authors
  1. Olav Spigset
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  2. Hedvig Nordeng
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Correspondence to Olav Spigset .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Messina, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Messina, Italy

    Edoardo Spina

  2. University of Messina, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Messina, Italy

    Gianluca Trifirò

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Spigset, O., Nordeng, H. (2016). Safety of Psychotropic Drugs in Pregnancy and Breastfeeding. In: Spina, E., Trifirò, G. (eds) Pharmacovigilance in Psychiatry. Adis, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24741-0_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24741-0_15

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