Cholesterol Drugs Tied To Birth Defects

If you're pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, there's one more group of medications to add to the long list of drugs you shouldn't take because they can harm your baby: the cholesterol-lowering medications called statins. Researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health found that statin use during the first trimester of pregnancy is associated with severe central nervous system defects and limb deformities. Their findings, published in a research letter in the April 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that 20 of 52 babies exposed to statins in the womb were born with malformations.

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