Determinants of medication use in a multi-ethnic population of pregnant women: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Objectives To investigate determinants of medication use among multi-ethnic pregnant women.

Methods A total of 641 pregnant women participated in this cross-sectional study in a Brussels university hospital. A questionnaire was used to obtain data on socio-demographic characteristics and medication use. Chi-squared tests and binary logistic regression analyses were performed using SPSS 19.

Results Medication use during pregnancy (37%) was positively associated with age older than 35 years, Western origin, being born in Belgium, high education and employment status. Highly educated Western women had a greater exposure to drugs with an unknown safety profile than Arab/Turkish and ‘Other (non-Western) origins’ women. In the latter two groups, low education and nulliparity were the most important determinants of lower drug use. Nulliparous Arab/Turkish women used significantly less medications (17%) during pregnancy than parous women with the same ethnic background (34%; p = 0.024).

Conclusions Medication use during pregnancy is considerable but differs according to ethnicity. Age, parity, educational level, occupational status and duration of stay in Belgium are important determinants that should be taken into account for risk assessment and preventive measures targeting pregnant women.

Keywords:

• Medication use
• Pregnancy
• Ethnicity
• Socio-economic status
• Immigration

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Prof. Dr Walter Foulon, head of the Obstetrics department at the UZ Brussel Hospital, and Dr Monika Laubach, head of the Obstetrics clinic, for helping with the access to data. We are also indebted to the midwives of the hospital's antenatal clinic for their assistance in distributing and collecting the questionnaires. Last but not least, we are grateful to pharmacist Seham Zaitoon for her help with data entry and to the Erasmus Mundus organisation for funding this research.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and the writing of the paper.