Chloramphenicol Therapy in Pregnancy

Abstract

Sir—The report by Choi and Pai [1] provides useful information for treating scrub typhus in pregnancy. However, they err in reporting the class of chloramphenicol for treatment in pregnancy. The current class is C, indicating no data for safety in pregnancy. There is a wealth of clinical data [2] demon-strating that chloramphenicol is safe to use in pregnancy if it is not circulating at the time of delivery, since the drug will cause gray syndrome in neonates. It does not seem to harm the fetus, however, which makes it safe to use during most of the pregnancy. Although a drug other than chloramphenicol would be used in most situations, physicians should not be afraid to use it when necessary simply because of pregnancy.