A majority of women use medications in pregnancy, either for acute or chronic conditions. Moreover, with more than 50% of pregnancies unplanned, millions of women continue to be exposed to drugs, chemicals, drugs of abuse, and alcohol not being aware that they have conceived.

For many drugs, information on fetal safety is partial or even none existing. Because drugs can cause irreversible damage to the developing fetus, this field is characterized by high anxiety levels among patients, their families, and health care providers.

The complexity of this field involves the need for better methods to study drug safety in pregnancy, the communication and understanding of women's perceptions and decision making, and the regulatory issues, to mention a few. This special issue will become an international forum for researchers and clinicians to address these issues. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Effects of drugs in pregnancy
• Different experimental for drug safety studies in pregnancy
• Epidemiological designs–challenges and advantages
• Regulatory aspects of drug use in pregnancy
• Drugs safety during breastfeeding
• Risk benefit paradigms for drug safety in pregnancy
• Networking globally

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ogi/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: