Objective 

To describe the occurrence and distribution of antibiotic treatments, in addition their indications in control pregnant women in the population-based large dataset of the Hungarian Case-Control Surveillance of Congenital Abnormalities, 1980-1996.

Results 

Of 38 151 control pregnant women who delivered later newborn infants without congenital abnormality, 6554 (17.2%) were treated by antibiotics.

Most women (14.5%) had penicillin, while 1.2% and 0.7% of pregnant women were treated by cephalosporins and tetracyclines, respectively.

More than 100 pregnant women used the following antibiotics : ampicillin (6.9%), penamecillin (5.9%), cefalexin (1.0%), phenoxymethylpenicillin (0.6%), oxytetracycline (0.5%), erythromycin (0.45%), benzylpenicillin-procain (0.4%) and benzylpenicillin+benzylpenicillin-procain (0.3%). Different antibiotics had different indications for treatment.

The mean birth weight was significantly lower in the treated group compared to the untreated group.

Practical implications : Different antibiotics have different chemical structures and indications for treatment.

Therefore it is not appropriate to evaluate their teratogenic potential of combined antibiotic groups.

There may be many interactions between underlying maternal diseases, other drug uses, further confounding factors and antibiotics studied, thus adequate controls are needed to estimate the adjusted teratogenic odds-risk ratios. (...)