Limb malformations, thalidomide

Pregnancy (A). Limb malformations induced by the hypnotic thalidomide (Contergan) first focused attention on the potential of drugs to cause malformations (teratogenicity). Drug effects on the unborn fall into two basic categories ... 

You may have heard of the thalidomide tragedy. Thalidomide was widely prescribed to pregnant women in the 1950s and early 1960s as a drug to combat morning sickness. Tragically, many of the babies born to these women had malformed limbs and it was later proved that thalidomide was linked to these birth defects. 

Thalidomide First Phocomelia (shortened or absent long bones of the limbs) and many internal malformations... 

The abnormality of the ossification centers found in the rat could be connected with abnormal development of long bones. Radiographs of the limbs of 92 children with deformities due to thalidomide showed joint changes similar to those in neuropathic (Charcot s) joints in adults. The authors suggested that thalidomide causes joint changes by causing an embryonic sensory neuropathy. This hypothesis can be extended to explain other visceral and congenital malformations (188). 

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