Use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in women delivering liveborn infants and other women of child-bearing age within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Mini-Sentinel program.

This study was conducted in order to assess the prevalence of use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) among pregnant women delivering a liveborn infant in the USA. A retrospective study was conducted using the automated databases of 15 health-care systems participating in the Mini-Sentinel program. Diagnosis and procedure codes were used to identify women ages 10 to 54 years delivering a liveborn infant between April 2001 and December 2013. A comparison group of age- and date-matched women without live births was identified. The frequency of use of SSRIs was identified from outpatient dispensing data. Among the 1,895,519 liveborn deliveries, 113,689 women (6.0 %) were exposed to an SSRI during pregnancy during the period 2001-2013; 5.4 % were exposed to an SSRI during 2013. During the corresponding time period, 10.5 % of the age- and date-matched cohort of women without live births was exposed to an SSRI, with 10.1 % exposed to an SSRI during 2013. The most common agents dispensed during pregnancy were sertraline (n = 48,678), fluoxetine (n = 28,983), and citalopram (n = 20,591). Among those women exposed to an SSRI during pregnancy, 53.8 % had a diagnosis of depression and 37.3 % had a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder during pregnancy or within 180 days prior to pregnancy. Our finding that 6 % of women with live births were prescribed SSRIs during pregnancy highlights the importance of understanding the differential effects of these medications and other therapeutic options on the developing fetus and on the pregnant women.

Surveillance of Medication Use During Pregnancy in the Mini-Sentinel Program.

OBJECTIVES: Mini-Sentinel is a pilot project sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to create an active surveillance system to monitor the safety of FDA-regulated medical products. We assessed the capability of the Mini-Sentinel pilot to provide prevalence rates of medication use among pregnant women delivering a liveborn infant. METHODS: An algorithm was developed to identify pregnancies for a reusable analytic tool to be executed against the Mini-Sentinel Distributed Database. Diagnosis and procedure codes were used to identify women ages 10-54 years delivering a liveborn infant between April 2001 and December 2012. A comparison group of age- and date-matched nonpregnant women was identified. The analytic code was distributed to all 18 Mini-Sentinel data partners. The use of specific medications, selected because of concerns about their safe use during pregnancy, was identified from outpatient dispensing data. We determined the frequency of pregnancy episodes and nonpregnant episodes exposed to medications of interest, any time during the pregnant/matched nonpregnant period, and during each trimester. RESULTS: The analytic tool successfully identified 1,678,410 live birth deliveries meeting the eligibility criteria. The prevalence of use at any time during pregnancy was 0.38 % for angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and 0.22 % for statins. For ≤0.05 % of pregnancy episodes, the woman was dispensed warfarin, methotrexate, ribavirin, or mycophenolate. CONCLUSIONS: The analytic tool developed for this study can be used to assess the use of medications during pregnancy as safety issues arise, and is adaptable to include different medications, observation periods, pre-existing conditions, and enrollment criteria.