My Wife took Zofran for a prolonged period of time for both our boys pregnancies, theyre now 4 and 2. The oldest is clearly Autistic, the younger one has learning disabilities.
Of course at the time the doctors said that taking Zofran is normal for morning sickness, what they dont tell you is that this use is "OFF LABEL", that normally it is only taken for 3 days after Chemo in cancer patients to stop nausea. Thats is its approved use, off label use in pregnancy should be reduced.
It probably shouldnt be taken for 6-months plus like it was with my wife. Although there maybe other causes of autism, something tells me that taking a neurotransmitter blocker for 6 months probably wasnt the smartest thing in hindsight. Our Physicians should have advised us of the dangers.
Instead my wife should have been hospitalised for 6 months and fed food there to deal with her morning sickness.
Zofran is expensive, but cheaper than bedrest in a hospital.
Of course there are many drugs that a woman may take during pregnancy, what really needs to happen here is that all Off Label usage of drugs need to be monitored so that trends can be found. Im thinking of starting a Balot initiative to that effect in CA to try to make sure that if there is a link between use of any drug and any disease not just autism there is data to analyse to find a cause and effect. Perhaps the CA FDB could monitor the data.
In any event this off label use needs to be at least monitored by somebody.
The monitoring needs to allow for anonomous follow up to mothers after 5 and then 10 years as symptoms of autism may not be diagnosed until later on, due to the size of the developing baby, drug usage in pregnant women should be closely monitored as the vast majority of drugs used in the USA are never tested on preganant women. Would have been nice to know that at the time :-)
Be careful what you take when your preganant and giving birth, your doctor wont tell you the risks.
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