Patients with mechanical valve prostheses require a lifelong anticoagulant treatment. The combined use of Warfarin and low-dose aspirin appears to reduce the risk of valve thrombosis and systemic embolism at a low risk of bleeding. The management of women with prosthetic heart valves during pregnancy poses a particular challenge, as there are no available controlled clinical trials to provide g...

BACKGROUND Between 1957 and 1962 thalidomide was used as a nonaddictive, nonbarbiturate sedative that also was successful in relieving the symptoms of morning sickness in early pregnancy. Infamously, thousands of babies were subsequently born with severe birth defects. The drug is used again, today, to successfully treat leprosy, and tragically, there is a new generation of thalidomide damaged ...

5.1. Use of prescription drugs during pregnancy (Studies I and II) 40 5.1.1. Reimbursements during pregnancy and lactation (Study I) 40 5.1.2. Reimbursements according to drug safety categorization (Study II) 44 5.1.2.1. Polytherapy 47 5.2. Safety of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors during pregnancy (Study III) 47 5.2.1. General characteristics of the study population 47 5.2.2. First-tri...

BACKGROUND The aromatase inhibitor, letrozole, exerts embryo toxic effects in rats, causing increased embryo lethality and anomalies of the axial skeleton at pharmacologically relevant doses. Letrozole acts by inhibiting estrogen biosynthesis. It may thus be feasible that estrogen deprivation is a crucial determinant of the elicited developmental toxic effects. In order to gain insight on this ...

he proper growth of the infant is primarily a function of adequate nutritional intake, which depends on whether the infant can feed safely and successfully. Extensive studies have focused on the benefits of mother's milk and on the appropriate nutrients and growth-promoting factors that are needed in formula for optimal infant growth. 1-3 Less attention has been placed on understanding how infa...

There are several relative (promising regarding a reduction in placenta-mediated complications such as preeclampsia) and absolute (e.g. a recurrent or recent thromboembolic event, mechanical heart valves) reasons for use of anticoagulant drugs during pregnancy. Warfarin readily crosses the placenta because of its low molecular weight, and is associated with a distinctive embryopathy known as fe...

The treatment of pregnant rats with the carbonic anhydrase inhibitor, acetazolamide, produced gross limb malformations primarily affecting the forepaw, but also producing variable ulnar dysmelia. Analysis of the cytoarchitecture of the ulnar dysmelic limbs showed the presence of cartilaginous and fibrocartilaginous connections between the ulnar and radial chondroepiphyses, with variable deforma...

The study aim was to compare the antagonistic interaction between saprotrophic soil fungi and embryonic development of geohelminths Toxocara canis and Ascaris suum. The experimental cultures were fertilized eggs of T.canis and A. suum incubated together with mycelium of strains: Fusarium culmorum, Metarhizium anisopliae,Paecilomyces fumosoroseus, Trichoderma viride and Trichothecium roseum. In ...

Abnormalities oflimbs have been seen occasionally at all times. Thalidomide-embryopathy, however, has produced special types of defects of the extremities, which in variety and above all in numbers has made necessary the provision of special centres for treatment. At the Dept. of Paediatric Surgery and Orthopaedics of the University Children's Hospital, Munich, we observed from January 1959 to ...

The year 1986 was the 25th anniversary of the recognition that thalidomide is a potent human teratogen, and our president, Lewis Holmes, asked me to organize a symposium at our 26th annual meeting to commemorate that event which, disastrous though it was, provided an immense stimulus to the development of teratology. I was able to gather a panel of speakers all of whom were deeply involved in t...