(USA Today) Popular antidepressants Paxil and Prozac are linked to higher rates of birth defects, but several similar drugs used to treat depression in pregnant women carry no such risks, a new study found.
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The latest research, the results of which have been added to the British Medical Journal, focused on if and how the specific depression treatment itself affected birth defect risk, as opposed to looking at the drug class as a whole.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control looked at data on more than 38,000 women who gave birth between 1997 and 2009. This was followed by an analysis that women bore children with birth defects.
The study also confirmed that Zoloft (sertraline) had no association with birth defects that it had previously been linked to – a good thing, considering that 40 percent of pregnant woman taking SSRI antidepressants use Zoloft. Meanwhile, Prozac increases the risk of two out of seven birth defects involving the heart and misshapen skull. Paxil, on the other hand, was found having an association with anencephaly – a disorder that does not enable a baby to develop some parts of the brain and skull while in mother’s womb.
A large-scale government study has drawn worrying links between the use of certain antidepressants and a heightened risk of birth defects. So while there is a pretty strong link associated between the antidepressant medications and the birth defects, the researchers could not definitively say that the medications were the root cause of the defects.
However, in each case an already very small risk absolute risk increased only slightly.
“”It is extremely important that physicians advise any girls taking into consideration use of Paxil (paroxetine) or other SSRIs for the duration of pregnancy of the potential dangers, which are clearly detailed inside the product label and patient info, recognizing that for some the rewards of therapy may possibly continue to outweigh the prospective danger”, a GlaxoSmithKline spokesman mentioned in a statement”. For instance, in women who took paroxetine early in pregnancy, the risk for anencephaly increased from 2 cases per 10,000 to 7 per 10?000.
Researchers also wish to point out that being on anti-depressants should not be taken as an indication to discourage pregnancies. That’s three times the rate of men the same age.
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SSSRI’s or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were taken by a total of 1,285 of the participants, during one month before conception through the first trimester of pregnancy – the period during which the fetus was believed to be most vulnerable.
