Can Clearly Gone be used safely during pregnancy?/nA 30-year-old woman with acne was previously tre

Fråga: Can Clearly Gone be used safely during pregnancy?

A 30-year-old woman with acne was previously treated with isotretinoin. She stopped this treatment because she wishes to become pregnant. Now she takes 20 tablets of Clearly Gone per day instead.

Sammanfattning: Clearly Gone should not be used by pregnant or lactating mothers, due to the lack of documentation concerning the safety of such high doses of vitamin B5.

Svar: Clearly Gone tablets can be bought over the Internet and are stated to contain 500 mg of vitamin B5 or pantothenic acid, to be used against acne. An intake of 20 tablets thus equals a daily dose of 10000 mg. The producers advises against the use of Clearly Gone during pregnancy and lactation (1). A literature search has revealed no information concerning the safety of such high doses of vitamin B5 during pregnancy.

The recommended daily intake of vitamin B5 is 5 mg, according to the Swedish National Food Administration (2). Data from the Swedish Birth Register indicate that the supplementation of vitamin B preparations during pregnancy does not increase the risk of fetal harm or malformations, based on data from 814 children exposed in utero (3). However, all approved vitamin B preparations in Sweden contain 30 mg or less of pantothenic acid. The highest recommended daily dose would thus be 90 mg of pantothenic acid from an approved product.

All B complex vitamins are transferred through the placenta by active transport, and newborns have significantly higher blood levels of these vitamins compared with their mothers (4). Clearly Gone. http://www.clearlygone.se/index.php (cited 2007-06-11) Pantotensyra. Livsmedelsverket. (cited 2007-06-12) Läkemedel och fosterskada. Uppdated 2003-12-29. Available from: URL: http://www.janusinfo.se Briggs GG, Freeman RK, Yaffe SJ. Drugs in pregnancy and lactation. 7th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2005