Can pregnant women take ibuprofen in late pregnancy?

Ibuprofen is a common medicine that has the effect of clearing heat and relieving pain. It is a must-have medicine in our family medicine cabinet in our daily life. For pregnant women, if you want to take ibuprofen, you must be careful. If you really need to take this medicine for treatment, you must do it under the guidance of a doctor, especially in the late pregnancy. If you take ibuprofen, it may have adverse effects on the baby.

Taking ibuprofen during late pregnancy can harm your baby

Like most medications, ibuprofen has been assigned a "pregnancy risk category" by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ibuprofen is considered Category D during the third trimester. This means there is a lot of evidence that taking it during late pregnancy could harm your baby. However, ibuprofen is not suitable for the rest of pregnancy as a class.

??This is a problem with so many drugs that the FDA is moving away from the current classification system and working on a new one. In the meantime, healthcare providers must look at all the evidence for each drug to determine when the benefits of taking a particular medication outweigh the risks.

Ibuprofen itself has not been well studied during pregnancy. Instead, most studies have looked at the effects of combining ibuprofen with other drugs in the same family (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, NSAIDs), such as aspirin and naproxen.

Ibuprofen is not recommended in late pregnancy for several reasons.

Most importantly, it can cause your baby's heart to close prematurely, possibly leading to heart or lung damage, or even death. Taking ibuprofen or other NSAIDs in the last few weeks of pregnancy has also been linked to low amniotic fluid levels. There is some concern that these drugs may delay or prolong labor.

??The remaining evidence of pregnancy is equivocal. Some studies suggest that using ibuprofen during the first trimester may slightly increase the risk of having a baby with certain birth defects. However, these studies have several weaknesses.

Most studies looked at many drugs together, not ibuprofen alone. Some diseases of the mother that are not taken into account may cause birth defects. Other studies of most NSAIDs during pregnancy have not found any evidence that these drugs cause birth defects.

Some evidence suggests that women should avoid trying to get pregnant while taking ibuprofen. Ibuprofen reduces the body's production of prostaglandins, which are needed for ovulation and embryo implantation in the uterus. A couple of studies suggest that using ibuprofen or other NSAIDs around the time of conception or in early pregnancy may raise the risk of miscarriage. (Other studies have found no evidence of such a risk.)

If you have already taken some doses of ibuprofen during pregnancy, don't worry - small amounts are unlikely to cause any problems.

To be safe, if you're looking for pain relief while you're pregnant, stick with acetaminophen, which has a long history of safe use during pregnancy.

If you think you need to take ibuprofen while you are pregnant, talk to your caregiver about whether the benefits of the medication outweigh any potential risks.