Last year a study proved something many of us have found out the hard way: much of the information nursing mothers get at the pharmacy counter is inaccurate. According to the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition:
The study's authors examined the safety information used by two large retail pharmacy chains on the East Coast, looking at 14 commonly-prescribed medications. For 75 percent of drugs that are considered unequivocally safe for breastfeeding, pharmacies were inappropriately advising mothers to stop nursing.
"We were surprised by the results, when we looked at all the resources systematically," said lead author, Monica Akus, PharmD, a pharmacist at Cambridge Health Alliance and Assistant Professor of Pharmacy at University of Rhode Island. Several well-respected sources used out of date information, most commonly resulting in inappropriate advice to stop breastfeeding. "As pharmacists, our training in drugs and lactation is often limited, so it's critical to spread the word to other pharmacists. Our knowledge is only as good as our resources," notes Akus.
The authors consider two resources to be the most reliable:
- LactMed, is a website run by the National Institutes of Health which you can use to look up medications and their impact on breastfeeding.
- Medications and Mothers Milk, by Dr. Thomas Hale (2008 edition coming out soon). I use this book a lot and find its "L1 to L5" scale of rating drugs very helpful.
Have you received bad information at the pharmacy counter? Were you told that a medication was unsafe when it wasn't, or safe when it was unsafe? Tell us about it below.
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