Intrauterine exposure to drugs and reproduction—still reasons for concern!

The last decades have seen an increasing use of pharmaceutical drugs worldwide. Alone in the US, statistics show that half of the population has taken at least one prescription drug within the last month. The high use of pharmaceutical compounds is not without consequence, and the last century has shown that especially the combination of drugs and pregnancy can result in severe outcomes. In this commentary, we will cover two of these examples, thalidomide and diethylstilbestrol, and couple this evidence with the emerging concern that intrauterine exposure to widely used mild analgesics may also result in subtle adverse effects. These include reproductive congenital malformations that have been coupled with subsequent reproductive defects later in life.