The finding recommended that it's the underlying high blood pressure, rather than the by using antihypertensive medicines at the begining of pregnancy that improves potential risk of birth defects.
Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are a kind of antihypertensive medications commonly recommended to handle high blood pressure.
It's already known that they've a toxic impact on foetuses in the 2nd or 3rd trimesters, but their effects on the foetus during the mother's 1st trimester is still not clear.
So analysts led by Dr De-Kun Li of the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute in California, set out to check if there is an association between using ACE inhibitors during a woman's 1st trimester and birth defects.
They analyzed files on 465,754 mother-infant pairs on the Kaiser Permanente Northern Californian region between 1995 and 2008.
Research revealed that females who used ACE inhibitors of their 1st trimester were more likely to have a baby with some type of birth defect in comparison with females who didn't have high blood pressure or who hadn't used any kind of antihypertensive medication.
However, the same elevated risk was found among females who used other antihypertensive medicines the ones with high blood pressure who didn't take any antihypertensive medication.
"Our finding recommends that it's likely the underlying high blood pressure rather then by using antihypertensive medicines in the 1st trimester that improves the risk of birth defects in offspring," the researchers concluded.
The analysis has been just released on the bmj web-site.
source timesofindia.indiatimes.com
