Human milk provides valuable nutrition for infants.
People may require medications post-partum during lactation which may impact milk production, quality or pose infant safety risks.
One of the most commonly reported barrier to breastfeeding is the lack of data on the safety of medications used during lactation.
We studied the use of medications during breastfeeding in more than 3500 moms and babies. We found that moms who were breastfeeding were more likely to be taking prescription medications than women who were not breastfeeding.
The most common medication? Domperidone, of course! Domperidone is a medication that is frequently prescribed off-label to increase milk production.
Thank-you to the Rady Innovation Fund for supporting our work. The open access publication of this work will be posted once available.
Dr. Kelly participated in a Cafe Scientifique at McNally Robinson on February 5th, 2020. She had the opportunity to share some of our work on medications used during breastfeeding and helps Drs. Azad and Nickel launch the Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC).
In February 2020, we hosted a community event for mothers who wanted to share their experiences and views on breastfeeding. In order to conduct patient oriented research we need to engage with those who are going to participate in the research and with those who are going to benefit most from the research results. We asked mothers how they prefer to be engaged in research, what they would need to know before participating in research, how data collection should be done and what outcomes are important to them. What we learnt will be incorporated into our study design and we are hoping to further engage with interested mothers as we develop and pilot prospective breastmilk collection methods.
A retrospective cohort study of 124 pregnant people who received benzodiazepines during lactation found that adverse outcomes, specifically sedation, was identified in only 1.6% (2 of 124) of infants and was not associated with benzodiazepine dose, number of hours breastfed, or any demographic trait.
The MILC members co-wrote a letter to the editor outlining methods and messaging for studies on obesity.