Can medication induced ovulation cause fetal abnormalities?

Clomiphene and gonadotropins induce ovulation and pregnancy in the majority of anovulatory women; however, there have been concerns about the adverse effects of these ovulation stimulants on pregnancy, particularly in terms of teratogenicity in the developing embryo. Congenital malformations are structural defects that are visible at birth, although many abnormalities at the cellular and molecular level, which are also essentially congenital, are not included in general statistics. After 28 weeks of gestation, the incidence of congenital malformations in the normal population ranges from 3.1%0 to 22.5%.0 A recent worldwide survey showed that the incidence of congenital malformations in approximately 20 million births was 8.3% based on birth certificates, 1.26% based on hospital records, 4.5% based on pediatrician examinations, and doubled to 7.5% based on examinations of infants at 6 and 12 months of age. 7.5%. Since the line between normal and abnormal morphology is often blurred, this leads to a high degree of variability in the incidence. Ovulation inducers have been used clinically for nearly 50 years, and many pregnancies have occurred during or after treatment, so it is important to know whether they increase a woman’s risk of delivering a congenitally malformed baby. From the studies conducted over the years, it is clear that ovulation-inducing drugs do not increase the risk of malformations present. There are some findings suggesting that ovulation inducing drugs may be associated with congenital malformations. However, it is postulated that anovulation with egg aging is common in twin births, low fertility and with medications such as clomiphene, and that the occurrence of malformations is more likely to be related to low fertility than due to the medications themselves. It is possible that the eggs are damaged before implantation in the uterine cavity, or even before fertilization, or that the malformations are due to aging of the eggs or sperm themselves.