Is it safe to take antibiotics while pregnant? & bull; hello healthy

Doctors usually warn women to avoid taking antibiotics while pregnant, especially in the first 3 months. The first trimester is an important period when the baby's organs are formed. Several antibiotics have been shown to have the potential to cause congenital abnormalities in the newborn, such as skull and brain malformations, heart defects, epilepsy and cleft lip.

But sometimes you have to use antibiotics while pregnant to treat certain health problems, such as urinary tract infections and group B strep (GSB) - two common infections in pregnant women.

So, would it be better for pregnant women to continue taking antibiotics to get better soon, or just skip it and choose another alternative? Here, we provide information about using antibiotics during pregnancy that are safe for you and your baby.

When to take antibiotics while pregnant?

Antibiotics are drugs used to fight bacterial infections. In addition, although they can fight infection-causing bacteria, antibiotics can kill some of the bacteria that are beneficial to the body. This can hinder your body's ability to prevent and fight disease, so medications must be chosen carefully. If doctors prescribe antibiotics when they are not needed, the patient may be exposed to risks that could have been avoided. This is especially true during pregnancy, as several drugs have been known to cause chronic malformations.

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However, for bacterial infections, such as urinary tract infections and group B strep, antibiotics are the only medication that will help you recover quickly. Therefore, you must use them even though these antibiotics carry potential risks to your baby. Why? In some cases, not treating the disease will make you more susceptible to recurrent infections and the impact will be far more harmful to the health of the baby than the effects of antibiotics, says Komal Bajaj, M.D., reproductive genetics scientist at Jacobi Medical Center.

In other words, if you are very sick and antibiotics are the only medication capable of helping you return to health, you may need to take them regardless of the potential risk to your baby.

Antibiotics during pregnancy, which are safe and which are not?

The Food and Drug Administration The (FDA) divides antibiotic types into four categories based on their safety for use during pregnancy: A, B, C, D and X. The safety of the drug will also be considered on a variety of external factors, including the age at which you are taking the antibiotics, as well as how much your dose and dose. for how long.

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If your doctor prescribes a dose of an antibiotic while pregnant, it is very likely that the drug falls in category A or B on the list of recommended drugs approved by the FDA for use during pregnancy. Some of the antibiotics that may be prescribed safely during pregnancy include:

Amoxicillin
Ampicillin
Clindamycin
Erythromycin
Penicillin
Nitrofurantoin
Gentamicin
Ampicillin-Sulbactam
Cefoxitin
Cefotetan
Cefazolin

Some antibiotics are mandatory for you to avoid during pregnancy. For example, tetracyclines - such as doxycycline, oxytetracycline, and minocycline - are used to treat acne and respiratory infections. Tetracyclines can damage the liver of pregnant women and discolor fetal teeth. Streptomycin, which is used to treat tuberculosis (TB), should also be avoided by pregnant women.

Safe guidelines for using antibiotics while pregnant

Before you start using antibiotics while pregnant, the doctor is at Yale University School of Medicine , Brigham and Women's Hospital, Faulkner Hospital and Harvard Medical School , reported by Baby Med, offers guidelines for the use of antibiotics during pregnancy. This includes:

Only use antibiotics during pregnancy if none of the other treatment options are equally effective
Avoid prescription antibiotics during the first trimester whenever possible
Choose a safe drug (usually the classic types of antibiotics have been tested in pregnant women)
Use a single recipe rather than multiple recipes. Multiple prescriptions, aka polypharmacy, are the use of multiple drugs at the same time.
The lowest possible dosage will prove effective
Do not use non-prescription drugs as long as antibiotic treatment is not over

If you have an infection and your gynecologist prescribes antibiotics, talk to your doctor about the possible risks of taking antibiotics while pregnant. In some cases, as with urinary tract infections, leaving the infection untreated can pose a greater risk to the pregnancy and to the unborn fetus.

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If antibiotics are the best way to treat your condition, your doctor will prescribe the safest antibiotic at the safest dose. Also make sure to always take your daily prenatal vitamins. Research shows that taking a daily folic acid supplement of at least 400 micrograms (most prenatal vitamins contain twice this amount) can counteract the negative effects of trimethoprim.