Pregnant women should be careful while taking painkillers --- especially with a new study highlighting that the risk of miscarriage can increase by two times for women who take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in early pregnancy!

According to the researchers from the University of Montreal, the NSAID class of painkillers - which chiefly include ibuprofen, naproxen, celecoxib and diclofenac - can increase the miscarriage risk in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.

With the support group Arthritis Ireland pointing out that it is important that pregnant women, as well as women trying to conceive, should take medications only after seeking the advice of their GP, it is being recommended that pregnant women who feel the need of a painkiller should use paracetamol instead of the other NSAIDs - that too after assessment by a GP or midwife on the type of pain.

To arrive at the conclusions about the increased miscarriage risk associated with NSAIDs, the researchers studied 4,705 cases of miscarriage up to the 20th week of gestation, along with observing 47,050 women who did not have a miscarriage.

The figures linked to the observations revealed that while 7.5 percent of pregnant women who had taken NSAIDs miscarried, as compared to only 2.6 percent of women who did not have a miscarriage.

Commenting on the findings, the researchers said that the "use of nonaspirin NSAIDs during pregnancy was significantly associated with a 2.4-fold increase in the risk of spontaneous abortion compared with non-use"!