Ibuprofen in early pregnancy may harm daughter's fertility

London, Feb 2 Women who consume commonly used Ibuprofen even for just two days during the first 24 weeks of their pregnancy may reduce their daughter's number of eggs, potentially affecting their fertility in the future, new research has warned.

The research carried out on human cells in the laboratory revealed that exposure to Ibuprofen during the crucial first three months of foetal development results in a "dramatic loss" of the germ cells that go into making the follicles from which female eggs develop.

The germ cells would either die or fail to grow and multiply at the usual rate.

"We found that two to seven days of exposure to Ibuprofen dramatically reduced the germ cell stockpile in human foetal ovaries during the first trimester of pregnancy and the ovaries did not recover fully from this damage," said Severine Mazaud-Guittot, a researcher at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research in France.

For the study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, the team exposed a part of the tissue from each of the 185 human foetuses between 7-12 weeks of development to Ibuprofen and kept the second part as the control.

They found that Ibuprofen crosses the placental barrier, with the foetus exposed to the same concentration of the drug as the mother.