Allergy Medicine During Pregnancy

Any kind of medication during pregnancy can have possible negative repercussions on the health of the baby. Fearing possible birth defects, doctors always recommend pregnant women to avoid medicines as far as possible. Still, sometimes the woman may suffer from an allergy whose symptoms may become unbearable for the woman. For cases like these, although it is unsafe, still certain medicines might be prescribed to the woman by her doctor to cure allergies. What constitutes these safe allergy medicines during pregnancy, let's find out.

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the medicines for pregnant women have been divided into five categories, based on the risks they pose to her pregnancy.

Category "A" Medicines
The medication which fall in this category are those on which various studies have been done with pregnant women, which show that these are very safe for the baby, even during the initial three months of pregnancy. Very few allergy medicines fall in the "A" category.

Category "B" Medicines
The medicines in this category are somewhat safe, but not completely so, as these medicines have been tried on pregnant animals. No studies have been done with them on pregnant women. Older antihistamines like chlorpheniramine, which fall in "B" category are considered safe during pregnancy. New antihistamines like cetirizine, xyzal and loratadine fall in the "B" category too, and are thus safe for pregnant women. Still, antihistamine uses and side effects should be looked into properly before starting their course. Medicated nasal sprays such as Cromolyn nasal spray, fall in the "B" category and are used to treat rhinitis, a common allergy during pregnancy.

Category "C" Medicines
The medicines in this category have been tried on animals, yet no human studies have been conducted. The studies have shown that they might have some negative effect on the pregnant animal, still they can be used as medication as their benefits are more than their possible risks. Decongestants such as pseudoephedrine fall in the "C" category. Although, it is given to pregnant women to cure allergies, still being a category "C" drug, should be avoided during the initial months, which is a high risk period for the pregnancy. Almost all nasal steroids come in the "C" category, except for budesonide, which has been given a "B" rating and thus, is one of the best allergy medicines to treat rhinitis when nasal sprays fail.

Category "D" Medicines
Category D medicines can prove to be very dangerous as their studies show that they can be risky for the health of the fetus. However, they may be prescribed in some specific cases.

Category "X" Medicines
If any medicine falls in this category, it should be completely avoided by all pregnant woman as past studies have confirmed that they will cause birth defects in babies.

Immunotherapy or allergy shots can be used for allergy relief during pregnancy, provided the woman was taking them even before she got pregnant. Also, the dose of the allergy shots should be cut down to decrease any possible risk such as anaphylaxis.

Thus, based on this system, it can be gauged what allergy medicine can you take during pregnancy. According to this system of categorizing medicines, allergy medication which falls in category "A", are the safest. However, there are some pitfalls in this rating. For example, this rating states that category "B" medicine is safer than category "C" medicine, but there have been no studies on pregnant women done to support this. Also, this system of rating does not apply very well to combination prescription drugs, which may cause drug interactions due to a number of active ingredients present in them. In spite of these drawbacks, this system of categorizing medicines is very widely used by medical practitioners when prescribing them for pregnant women.