Researchers reported on Monday that antidepressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, which affect a message-carrying brain chemical called serotonin, may raise the risk of pre-term delivery and affect a baby’s health at birth. In fact, women who took antidepressants during pregnancy in the study had twice the risk of pre-term delivery as other women.
A Danish study shows that the risk is greatest when moms-to-be take more than one selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant or switch SSRIs early in pregnancy. Babies born to women who had filled prescriptions for more than one SSRI had a fourfold increase in septal heart defects — a malformation of the wall that divides the left and right sides of the heart.
In light of recently released evidence that some drug makers have gone to great lengths to turn scientific articles into marketing vehicles for their products, some influential medical editors are cracking down on industry-financed ghostwriting. And they are getting help from some members of Congress.
New research shows that antidepressants are now the most widely prescribed drugs in the country. According to a report in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a journal of the American Medical Association, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of antidepressants since l996. It’s not only stressed out middle-aged folks being treated for problems caused by supposed depression, either. Perhaps the most disturbing part of the new study is that it shows a broad expansion in the patient population being put on these drugs — starting with children as young as six.
The journal Archives of General Psychiatry will “look into” whether an author who recommended antidepressants for preschoolers failed to disclose her financial ties to Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Shire, companies which make such drugs, according to Philip Dawdy of Furious Seasons.