Prescription of drugs during pregnancy in France.

A survey of the records of the French Health Insurance Service of drug prescriptions during pregnancy in 1000 women living in Haute-Garonne, southwest France, showed that 99% of the women received a prescription for at least one drug during pregnancy with a mean of 13.6 medications per woman. 1.6% of women received one or more prescriptions of drugs from the US Food and Drug Administration X category (fetal risk outweighs benefits). 59% of women had a prescription of drugs from the D category (fetal risk but benefits may be acceptable) and 79% of women were exposed to drugs for which information about safety in pregnancy was not available from animal or human studies.