Psychotropic Medication Safety in Pregnancy: Moving Beyond Malformation Risk
Join us on Wednesday, May 6th for the Department of Epidemiology seminar series featuring Dr. Krista Huybrechts discussing Psychotropic Medication Safety in Pregnancy: Moving Beyond Malformation Risk.
Abstract: Psychotropic medication use during pregnancy has increased substantially, heightening the need for robust evidence to guide prescribing and to inform patients about the risks and benefits of treatment continuation. Historically, research has focused on congenital malformations—paradigmatic harms in the shadow of the thalidomide catastrophe—but other unintended drug effects are equally important and pose distinct methodological challenges. This seminar will examine what we have learned about studying outcomes such as nonlive births and longterm neurodevelopment in children, highlighting study design challenges, potential biases, and data issues that shape inferences about psychotropic medication safety in pregnancy.
Bio: Krista Huybrechts is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She co-founded and co-directs the Harvard Program on Perinatal and Pediatric Pharmacoepidemiology (H4P). Her work, which is funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health, focuses on the use of advanced epidemiological and statistical methods applied mainly to large databases derived from health data collected in the context of routine medical care to help address the unique questions regarding benefit-risk trade-off for prescription medication use faced by women of reproductive age and pregnant women.
Speaker Information
Krista Huybrechts, MS, PhD
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