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.
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.
In nearly all the studies and papers published over the years that claim SSRIs work with children and do not cause suicide, the same academic quacks appear as investigators and co-authors. The list of names includes, but is not limited to, Joseph Biederman, David Brent, Jeffrey Bridge, David Dunner, Graham Emslie, Daniel Geller, Robert Gibbons, Frederick Goodwin, Martin Keller, Andrew Leon, Anne Libby, John Mann, John March, Charles Nemeroff, John Rush, Neal Ryan, David Shaffer, Karen Wagner and Robert Valuck.
The FDA analysis by Dr. Marc Stone, Dr. Thomas Laughren and colleagues involved a review of data from eight drug makers on 372 clinical trials involving nearly 100,000 adults.
Overall, they found the risk of suicide was “strongly age-dependent,” with higher risks in people under 25, no difference among those 25 to 64, and lower risks in people 65 and older.