Why Aren’t There Better Treatments For Pregnant Women?
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
What do all of these conditions have in common? Morning sickness, eclampsia and pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes? They all affect pregnant women, no-one knows what causes them, and medical science has no way to medicate or treat them.
Morning sickness is normal and some doctors believe it is a sign of a healthy pregnancy, it’s unpleasant for many, and debilitating for some. Morning sickness affects around 80% of pregnant women, with around 10% having their lives seriously affected by their morning sickness, and many women suffer throughout their pregnancies. The only cure is time, and for mothers who suffer all through their pregnancies, is delivering the baby.
Pre-eclampsia, dangerously high blood pressure in a pregnant woman, is a very serious condition, affecting around 5% of pregnant women, and can be fatal to mother and baby. The disease can be managed somewhat, but the only cure is to deliver the baby.
Gestational diabetes, GD, affects about 8% of mothers, and while it can be managed to some extent with diet, exercise, and insulin treatments in some cases, mothers and babies with GD are at risk of complications and birth defects. The only cure is to deliver the baby.
The only cure is to deliver the baby? Have we moved on from medieval times? When millions of people suffer worldwide from non-pregnancy high blood pressure and diabetes, and drug companies are spending billions of dollars on research and bringing out new drugs to treat them, why is there next-to-nothing for pregnant women?
In defense of the researchers and doctors, care and treatment for pregnant women has improved drastically in the last generation.
And to bring a new drug to the market, it must be tested on real patients, and pregnant women are understandably reluctant to try experimental drugs. Everyone has heard of the horrific birth defects caused by Thalidomide. This untested-on-pregnant-women drug was prescribed to thousands of women as a treatment for morning sickness in the 1950s and 1960s.
Still, as we know, it’s 2008. Medical science is light years ahead of where it was in the era of Thalidomide, in the 1950s.
So why are common, and serious conditions, like pre-eclampsia and GD, so poorly understood? Why is research into them so underfunded? And why are there no effective treatments for them today?
I was inspired to write this post by this article in USA Today.
frumiousb says...
There are two big reasons. Most research is carried out by commercial agencies, and there is a very limited potential market for any treatment. Reason number one.
Reason number two is, as you say, fear of liability and very serious ethical concerns with medical tests on pregnant women. That’s all very well and good, but it currently means that the vast majority of medicine used on pregnant women today is used off-label, with no real idea as to consequences.
The Preeclampsia Foundation (www.preeclampsia.org) is working hard to lobby pharma companies to put more effort into research and treatment. There are also proposals for government funds to be made available to research areas like preeclampsia which are not such good candidates for the drug companies themselves. They also have summaries on their web site about the state of current research.
But we would all like to know the answers to your questions.
Cheryl
(Came in through Google. We lost our first and only child to severe preeclampsia/HELLP Syndrome in 2006.)
frumiousbs last blog post..Early morning police.
Melissa Haynie says...
While I agree that there needs to be research into helping some of these conditions… lets remember that if we were indeed in the medieval times that mom would most likely just die before or during delivery. Delivering the baby to relieve the symptoms seems like it is a cure from the dark ages for sure… but until only about a half of century ago women had to carry through all of these problems until term and then risked the chance that they were going to have a huge baby (from diabetes) and trouble during the normal delivery ( eclampsia, diabetes, you name it) Not to mention they have some drugs that they can offer to help a little with morning sickness Emily Bronte DIED of morning sickness! And I for one am willing to be cautious with the treatment of morning sickness considering the thalidimide babies that came from that particular venture into easing morning sickness. A whole lot more research can and should be done… but we can’t complain to loudly when it is all put into perspective.