One in three pregnant women use unprescribed medicines in Ibadan — Study

EXPERTS, in a study, say that unprescribed and herbal medicines use are common among pregnant women in Ibadan, Oyo State, particularly among women with low economic status and those with poor utilisation of antenatal care services.

The study found that 31.9 percent and 21.7 percent of pregnant women use unprescribed and herbal medicines respectively and, therefore, called for health education that discourages the use of unprescribed and herbal medications to pregnant women during antenatal care.

The study, a component of the Ibadan Pregnancy Cohort Study (IbPCS) spanning a period of April 2018 to September 2019, had included pregnant women in Ibadan who were enrolled early during their antenatal booking visit at four hospitals and followed up till delivery.

The hospitals are University College Hospital (UCH), Adeoyo Maternity Teaching Hospital, Jericho Specialist Hospital and St Mary Catholic Hospital, Ibadan.

This was in the 2023 BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies.

In all, 571 women participated in the maternal drug use assessment during the third trimester using a pretested interviewer-administered questionnaire.

The assessed included sociodemographic, obstetric, antenatal care utilisation and lifestyle characteristics.

According to the researchers, tertiary education, increasing income, adequate antenatal care (more than four visits) and at least two doses of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine were significant predictors of pregnant women that will take unprescribed medicine which were protective.

For herbal medicines, the predictors were similar to unprescribed drugs.

Common unprescribed medicines used by pregnant women include analgesics (53.5 percent), multivitamins supplements (30.5 percent) and anti-malaria medications.

The most familiar herbal medications reported were herbal concoctions which contained leaves, tree bark and some unknown components.

According to the researchers, there is increasing evidence that maternal use of non-prescribed and herbal medicines can cause significant harm to both the mother and unborn baby and could lead to adverse outcomes such as preterm birth, low birth weight, congenital malformations and attention-deficit disorder.

In addition, they declared that weak enforcement of regulations on the sale and distribution of herbal and prescription medicines in Nigeria imply that women who use unprescribed medicines may be exposed to the consumption of counterfeit drugs and toxic herbal preparations, thus posing a risk to their fetuses.

They, however, suggested that future research should conduct studies with sufficient sample sizes to examine the associations of specific medications with pregnancy outcomes.