Including Pregnant Women in Clinical Research: Practical Guidance for Institutional Review Boards

Scanty evidence exists about the safety and effectiveness of drugs—and of their efficacious dosing—that women may need to treat acute and chronic health issues during their pregnancies. This lack of evidence puts pregnant women and their fetuses at risk of harm from the use or avoidance of drugs during pregnancy. In light of the protectionist approach in regulations governing research with pregnant women and fetuses, trial sponsors, researchers, clinicians, and institutional review boards (IRBs) have been reluctant to include pregnant women in clinical drug trials, applying ethical reasoning for exclusions that reflects a default exclusionary approach. Yet in recent years, many clinicians, researchers, bioethicists, and professional societies have called for a reexamination of the routine practice of excluding pregnant women from clinical research. This paper proposes a practical approach to an ethical framework for IRBs that supports fair inclusion, rather than routine exclusion, of pregnant women in clinical research. This guidance will aid IRBs in ethically including and appropriately protecting pregnant women in research.