Nicotine patches have no clear harmful effect on unborn babies: study

CANBERRA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Nicotine patches and other tobacco alternatives are safer for pregnant women than smoking, an Australian study has found.

The report, released by the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) on Monday, found that nicotine patches are far less harmful for unborn babies than previously thought.

It was found that the lower levels of nicotine associated with patches and other replacement treatments had no clear harmful effect on foetuses.

Sarah White, director of Quit Victoria, said that while quitting entirely was always preferable, moving to patches was a viable alternative.

"But if that's not working for them, pregnant women should not be concerned about using nicotine-replacement products, as well," White told News Limited on Monday.

"While nicotine-replacement products do contain nicotine, unlike cigarettes they don't contain thousands of cancer-causing toxic chemicals like tar and carbon monoxide, so they're nowhere near as harmful as smoking for the woman or unborn child."

In addition to analyzing the effects of nicotine on unborn children, researchers also surveyed doctors to find out how often they recommended pregnant women to use nicotine patches instead of smoking.

Lead author Yael Bar-Zeev found that 25 percent of General Practitioners (GPs) and obstetricians had never prescribed nicotine or replacement therapies.

"Nicotine may not be completely safe for the pregnant mother and foetus, but it is always safer than smoking," Bar-Zeev wrote.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the smoking rate in Australia has dropped nearly 10 percent since 1995.

"Just over one in seven (14.5 percent) adults were smokers in 2014-15 compared with nearly one in four (23.8 percent) in 1995," Louise Gates, ABS director of health, said in May.