Clomid Overview: How It Helps Regulate Ovulation
Our Clomid overview begins with how the drug helps stimulate ovulation in low-fertility women. Also known generically as clomiphene, doctors prescribe it to women who don’t release eggs every cycle, or only irregularly. These women aren’t infertile, but they need assistance to ensure fertility is consistent and regular. Clomid triggers a chemical response that ensures the woman’s ovaries release eggs during her monthly cycle. This increases her chances of successful pregnancy. Generally considered successful, Clomid was prescribed for decades in cases where women needed help conceiving.
Clomid Overview: Helping Women Conceive for 50 Years
Fertility drug clomiphene celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its approval in 2017. But the drug’s coming under increasing scrutiny as more reports surface of clomiphene-induced birth defects. Since 2006, an increasing number of studies have suggested Clomid is the cause of cleft palates, spinal defects, skull defects, limb defects, and other disorders.
Long-Term Studies Caused Concern
But in the mid-1990s, drug researchers began long-term studies of Clomid, and the data gave reason for concern. In 2010, Time magazine reported on a Harvard School of Public Health study showing a link between Clomid and autism. Two years later, the New England Journal of Medicine published a report linking the drug to various birth defects.
Of all the available data, though, it is an eight-year Centers for Disease Control report that suggests the potential link between Clomid and birth defects. Using data from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study, the CDC found that mothers using Clomid reported a higher rate of birth defects in their babies, including heart disorders, esophageal defects, prematurely fused skull sutures, and omphalocele — a condition where a baby’s internal organs form in a sac outside of the body.
Only now after decades in use are people finally seeing the link between Clomid and birth defects. The CDC and FDA have ongoing investigations into Clomid’s risks. Many mothers still wonder if the drug they used to get pregnant is responsible for their children’s health concerns.