Abstract

Across Europe large numbers of women take medicines during pregnancy. How safe are these medicines? This seminar will examine how much evidence there is on the safety of medicines in pregnancy, how this evidence has been obtained and what new methods are being applied to obtain more evidence. Briefly case studies of what happens when a drug is identified as being potentially harmful will be presented.

Biography

I am Professor of Medical Statistics and Director of the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register (NDSCR). I am responsible for providing national surveillance of congenital anomalies for England and Wales. I work with EUROCAT (European Congenital Anomaly Registers) to develop methods of surveillance of congenital anomalies and with EURO Medicat to develop a European reproductive pharmacovigilance system. My work with Professor Sir Nicholas Wald is in evaluating the effectiveness of screening strategies for many different disorders, for example heart disease (including the meta-analytic work on the “polypill” ), familial hypercholesterolaemia, cystic fibrosis, fragile X syndrome, neural tube defects and Down syndrome. Recent work includes mathematically modeling the population effect of cascade testing for a range of disorders.