[Multicenter study on the use of drugs during pregnancy in Spain (II). Drugs used during pregnancy. Spain DUP workshop].

A structured questionnaire administered to the 1,371 participating women was used for data collection on drug use in the multicentric study on Drug Use during Pregnancy in Spain. This paper describes and discusses the pattern of the use of medicines during pregnancy. Only 104 women (7%) stated that they had not taken any drug during their pregnancy, while 627 (45%) had taken 3 or more medicines; 39% of all medicines used were fixed-dose combinations of two or more drugs, the mean number of these taken by the participating women being 8.9. The most frequent reason for taking medicines during pregnancy was vitamin supplementation (823 women, 60%), and out of the 1,119 medicines taken to this end, 443 (30%) contained vitamin A. Other reasons for using medicines were the treatment of anaemia (497, 36%), dispepsia (235, 17%), nausea and/or vomiting (204, 14%), colds, pain, urinary tract infections, headache, and genital infections.