About 1-5% of women develop hypertensive disorders in pregnancy and some of them are treated with antihypertensive drugs.1 Gestational hypertension increases the risk of preeclampsia1 and has been associated to negative outcomes in pregnancy, like spontaneous abortion, intrauterine growth restriction and premature delivery.2

Are these outcomes due to hypertension or drugs?

Spontaneous reporting data for Italy in 2012 will be shortly published by the AIFA1 portal. Numbers are once again surprising (Figure 1): more than 29,000 reports, with a 35% increase respect to 2011. The increase is higher for drugs (+41%) than for vaccines (+7%). The reporting rate (489 reports for one million inhabitants) has overcome countries with a strong tradition in Pharmacovigilance. For example, in the United Kingdom the yearly published data by MHRA show a quite stable reports-amount in the last 4 years, with a reporting rate of 409/million in 2012.2