Below are some preliminary results, as of March 7, 2002.
(For Feb 20, 2001 results, click here .)
(Please note that his survey is not supported by, endorsed by, or affiliated with UCLA.)

The following is based on the first 267 survey responses (from 208 subjects). We are currently about halfway through the remaining 220-or-so additional responses. We feel this is a pretty substantial dataset considering that few previous studies have looked at more than a few dozen pregnancies.

Of the 267 pregnancies reported, 53 may not qualify as HG based on the subjects' reported weight loss and the subjects' response to the question of whether or not they were diagnosed by a physician. In what follows, these 53 responses are ignored, leaving 214 pregnancies with HG.

1) Effectiveness of medications.

It is very difficult to assess the effectiveness of medications from survey data, so we encourage readers to refer whenever possible to clinical studies rather than the results presented here. Our preliminary reports on the effectiveness of various drugs are listed in the table . The drugs most commonly used appear to be Promethazine, Prochlorperazine, Pyridoxine, Ondansetron, and Trimethobenzamide. Of these, our data suggest that Ondansetron (Zofran) may be the most effective, followed by Promethazine (Phenergan). The other 3 drugs were effective only for a very few respondents. Pyridoxine (vitamin B6) appears to be very ineffective. Of the less commonly used medications, Metoclopramide (Reglan) and Doxylamine (Unisom) show signs of effectiveness, with 40% and 34%, respectively, of respondents claiming that they were at least slightly effective. However, this is based on very few respondents (17 and 26, respectively). Meclizine (Antivert), Corticosteroids, Diclectin, and medical Marijuana had similarly high percentages reporting effectiveness, but for these medications the sample sizes are extremely small.

2) Safety of medications.

It is extremely difficult to assess the safety of medications from survey data, so we encourage readers to refer whenever possible to clinical studies rather than the results presented here. (Note however that clinical trials of drugs on pregnant women with HG are scarce; often these drugs are given safety ratings based on the results of their use in clinical trials on patients with other conditions.)

a) Side Effects. From the preliminary survey results it appears that all the drugs have few side effects: only four medications (Promethazine, Cyclizine, Scophlamine, and Prochlorperazine) had reports of adverse reactions in more than 10% of pregnancies, and even among these three drugs none except Promethazine had a rate higher than 12.5%. Further, reactions to Cyclizine and Scophlamine were only reported in 1 out of 8 cases each, so the estimated rate of 12.5% may well be too high; the data are certainly insufficient so far to indicate any major cause for concern. Pyridoxine, Doxylamine, Metoclopramide, Trimethobenzamide, and Zantac all seemed surprisingly free of side-effects, with no adverse reactions reported out of a combined 179 reports of use.

b) Pregancy outcomes.

Though all the drugs appear to be safe in terms of adverse side effects, there remains the question of the safety of the drugs on the fetus. This is especially difficult to investigate, since pregnant women with more severe HG will likely receive different prescriptions (in terms of medications and doses) than those with less severe cases. Hence the effect of the drug on the fetus is confounded with the effect of the severity of HG on the fetus. On the other hand, since studies have shown there is no positive correlation between nausea and vomiting in pregnancy and fetal loss (in fact a slight negative correlation has been reported), and since, to our knowledge, no study has indicated a correlation between the severity of HG and fetal loss, the extent of the impact of this confounding factor is unclear.

One way to investigate safety is to investigate the proportion of pregnancies that make it to term and the proportion that are lost in the 2nd or 3rd trimesters -- however, note that we are not addressing possible long term drug effects to the fetus such as cognitive impairment and other developmental abnormalities that may reveal themselves after birth. We present a summary of the preliminary results here, but again the reader should bear in mind that it is unclear whether the fetal losses reported here are causally related to the drug prescribed, rather than severity of HG or some other confounding factor, i.e. some difference between the patients receiving this drug from other patients. For instance, 3 of the 4 pregnancies where the patient took Scophlamine resulted in fetal loss or abortion. However, Scophlamine is rarely prescribed: it seems plausible that these patients were only prescribed Scophlamine because nothing else worked; the severity of their HG condition may well be the culprit, not Scophlamine. By contrast, the results for Chlorpromazine (Thorazine) are quite impressive: out of 17 completed pregnancies in which this drug was used, only one did not result in successful birth and that one was aborted. For most of the other drugs, the successful birthrate is between 75% and 85%. Note that we distinguish fetal losses occurring after the first 12 weeks from those in first 12 weeks because the latter are so common among ALL pregnancies and are thus very difficult to attribute to HG or to any particular medication. One final note: the successful birth rate for Pyridoxine (vitamin B6) in our survey results is 90%. Of the 10% that are unsuccessful, only 3 (4.8%) are attributed to fetal loss, and the other 5 (7.9%) were aborted. The results suggest that perhaps vitamin B6 is very safe but very ineffective, and since it is commonly prescribed to patients with HG, perhaps this medication can be viewed as a sort of placebo, i.e. as a control group with which to compare other medications. If such a comparison is fair, then the preliminary survey results suggest that several of the prescriptions have significant positive correlations with fetal loss, especially Trimethobenzamide, Promethazine, and Zantac. Again, we must emphasize that it is unclear whether this correlation may be attributed to the use of the medication rather than some other confounding factor such as HG severity.

3 Other summaries of our survey results

a) Job Discrimination.

49 (22.9%) reported discrimination based on HG at work. 80 (37.4%) reported no discrimination, 1 (0.47%) said she quit work, and 84 (39.3%) did not respond to this question.

b) Planning.

63 (29.4%) of the pregnancies were reportedly unplanned, and of these 6 (9.5%) were unwanted.

c) Psychology.

16 respondents reported having had a psychological disorder prior to their pregnancy with HG. 112 said they had none, and 86 (40.2%) had no comment.

d) Eating Disorders.

Only 8 respondents reported ever having had an eating disorder, with 111 respondents reporting never having had an eating disorder and the remaining 95 (44%) not commenting.

e) Health.

37 respondents reported chronic health problems, 130 reported no chronic health problems, and 47 (22%) did not respond.

f) The pill.

154 respondents said they had taken the birth control pill, 18 said they never took it, and 42 (19.6%) did not respond. Out of the 154 who took the pill, 54 (35.1%) said they had no bad reaction, 19 (12.3%) had no response, and the remaining 52.6% reported various negative reactions such as nausea.

g) Changing plans.

99 respondents said they have changed their pregnancy plans because of HG. 30 said they have not, 36 indicated they are not sure, and 49 (22%) did not respond.

h) Hospitalization.

69 respondents were hospitalized more than once due to HG. 48 said they were not hospitalized more than once with HG, and 97 (45.3%) did not respond.

i) Racial identity.

Out of 167 qualified respondents, 120 (71%) are white, 5 (2.9%) are black, 9 (5.4%) are Hispanic, 6 (3.6%) are Asian, and 27 (16%) did not indicate racial identity.

j) NVP after pregnancy.

Out of 214 qualified pregnancies with HG, 80 said they still had nausea and vomiting after the pregnancy was over, 85 said it stopped after the pregnancy was over, and 49 (22.9%) has no comment.

k) Smoking.

10 responses indicated smoking between 2 and 10 cigarettes per day, 3 smoked 20/day, 1 smoked 40/day, 184 responses indicated no smoking before the pregnancy, and 16 (7.5%) did not respond. During pregnancy, 1 subject reported smoking 40 cigarettes per day, 1 smoked 5/day, 1 smoked 2/day, 160 reported not smoking, and the remaining 51 (23.8%) did not respond.

l) Alcohol.

23 responses indicated drinking between 21/4 and 1 alcoholic drink per day prior to pregnancy, 3 reported 2 drinks/day, 1 reported 2.5 drinks/day, 169 responses indicated no alcohol drinking before the pregnancy, and 18 (8.4%) did not respond. All 174 subjects who responded said they did not drink any alcohol during pregnancy.

m) Severity Trends.

Of the 167 qualified respondents, 51 respondents said the HG got more severe in subsequent pregnancies, 40 said not more severe, 2 said the same, and the remaining 74 did not respond.

4) Drug responses by fetal gender.

To investigate whether the safety and effectiveness of certain prescriptions may depend on the gender of the fetus, we divided Table 1 into 2 other tables (see here), one for cases where the fetus was a girl and one for cases where the fetus was a boy. No major differences were apparent from our preliminary results.

(Please note that his survey is not supported by, endorsed by, or affiliated with UCLA.)