>
<http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ghl0wbRYmZw-qWuxYCxhhZhrUPcg>
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ghl0wbRYmZw-qWuxYCxhhZhrUPcg
>
> TORONTO - Some women given codeine after childbirth may be unknowingly
> putting their infants at risk because their breast milk carries an
> abnormally high dose of morphine derived from the commonly prescribed
> painkiller, researchers say.
>
> Almost half of women who give birth in North America have caesarean
> sections
> or surgical episiotomies and many are prescribed a pill containing
> acetaminophen and codeine to control their pain.
>
> But Dr. Gideon Koren, head of the Hospital for Sick Children's Motherisk
> program, says a study he co-authored suggests codeine may be an
> inappropriate treatment and can be potentially life-threatening for some
> infants.
>
> About one in 20 Canadian women who give birth are believed to carry excess
> copies of a gene that controls how codeine is metabolized in the body,
said
> Koren, a pediatrician and clinical pharmacologist at the Toronto hospital.
>
> A small proportion of codeine, which in itself does not alleviate pain, is
> broken down by the body into morphine. For most people, only about 10 per
> cent is transformed into morphine. But a small percentage are
> "ultra-metabolizers," whose bodies convert much more of the codeine into
> the
> potent narcotic, which finds its way into breast milk.
>


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