Drug therapy in breastfeeding women

Breastfeeding has a series of important advantages for both mother and child. It should never be interrupted prematurely without any important reason. The drug administration to breastfeeding mother brings often uncertainty whether and how the infant might be influenced. We can find the data on possible risk of a drug in the Summary of Product Characteristic. Other data come from published clinical cases of adverse reactions and studies of breastfed infants whose mothers took drugs. The decision about possible continuation of breastfeeding during drug administration depends on the ratio of evidence based or theoretically supposed risk and great advantage of breastfeeding itself. Whenever the mother takes a drug while breastfeeding the physician must inform her well about all possible risks and he must start with more close collaboration and careful observation of the child. At the end of this article there is a short review of some drugs that may influence lactation, are contraindicated during breastfeeding, very risky or compatible with breastfeeding.

Keywords: Key words: breastfeeding, drugs, adverse reactions.