TERATOGENIC EFFECT OF DRUGS ON EMBRYONIC FETAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The issues of the influence of drugs on the embryonic development of fetuses continue to remain quite relevant today. The modern scientific and medical community of today has a lot of information about the effect of various drugs on the fetus, but it is still clearly insufficient to be sure of conducting optimal and safe pharmacotherapy in pregnant women. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the use of new antiviral vaccines have exacerbated the general problem of the effect of drugs on the course of pregnancy and fetal health. Unfortunately, there are currently insufficient statistics on the use of these vaccines during pregnancy, which limits the ability of doctors to use them without compromising the health of the mother and her unborn child. At the same time, aggressive advertising, advice from non-professionals, popular medical literature, which is not always professional, are used by pregnant women to choose and take medications during pregnancy, often without thinking about what harm the medicine used can cause to the health of the mother and her unborn child. Pediatricians have repeatedly drawn attention to the problem of the effect of drugs on the embryonic development of fetuses. But the recent appearance of new drugs: antitumor antibiotics, drugs for the treatment of oncology, anti-inflammatory drugs and vaccines for the treatment of viral diseases have again attracted the attention of doctors to the health of pregnant women and their fetus. The problem of drug teratogenesis, which began with the thalidomide scandal, still remains relevant. Today, the safety of pharmacotherapy is being given significant importance, which certainly has a significant priority in the treatment of pregnant women. The use of modern diagnostic techniques allowed doctors to predict the development of the embryo and the effect on it of drugs used during pregnancy in more detail. In this review, the authors attempt, using mainly domestic literature, to focus the attention of interested parties on the negative factors and consequences of the use of certain drugs, in particular, antibiotics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and their analogues on fetal development and the health of mothers and their children.