Antidepressants Tied To Preterm Births: Study
16 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 22nd, 2010 // 12:06 pm
Among nearly 3,000 women who gave birth in Washington State, those who started taking SSRI antidepressants in the second or third trimester had a higher risk of preterm birth, according to Reuters, which cites a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Compared with others not given the meds, the women were nearly five times more likely to deliver prematurely. The same risk was not seen, however, among women who started on an SSRI before pregnancy or during the first trimester.
The study also found a higher risk of preterm delivery among women who took anti-anxiety drugs known as benzodiazepines, regardless of when they began treatment, Reuters continues. Those drugs, which include meds such as lorazepam (Ativan) and alprazolam (Xanax), were linked to higher risks of other complications, including low birth weight, newborn respiratory distress and a low Apgar score, which measures newborn health. The SSRIs, by the way, include Lilly’s Prozac, GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil and Pfizer’s Zoloft.
But the meaning isn’t clear, because the study couldn’t estimate treatment benefits. And SSRIs didn’t appear to present equal risks for all women. “It is very important to have other studies of the risks associated with (these) drugs, but also of benefits associated with treating mothers,” Ronit Calderon-Margalit of the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health in Jerusalem tells Reuters.
pharmavet
I’ve worked with the Biostatistics group at University of Washington, and you can rely on their data. based on this paper I would require any woman of childbearing potential to have a pregnancy test before taking one of these drugs, whether it’s a formal recommendation of ACOG or not. The reality, however is that most psychiatrists in private practice don’t do lab work-ups on their patients and certainly would not wish to be called by insurance companies 5X/day to justtify reimbursement on a pregnancy test for a psych patient.
Lisa Van Syckel
Pharmavet, it is actually Ob/Gyn’s who do the majority of the prescribing. And in NJ, It is mandated that every woman who is pregnant be screened for postpartum depression.
In my daughter’s case, she was given a postpartum depression screen, while in labor, and in the middle of a contraction.
Maryjo Codey advocated for this law, this woman speaks publicly, that 22 years after delivering her first child she is still being treated for postpartum depression.
She also has a part in Obamacare, where every woman nation wide will be screened and prescribed medication
Amy Philo
Thanks Ed… more people need to be reading these studies so they can be warned. This is just the latest of so many studies that confirm what we already know. There is no circumstance in which a pregnant woman should be told that there is any potential justifying benefit whatsoever that would make it worthwhile to risk her child’s life.
Elaborating on pharmavet’s comment and Lisa’s:
Dear pHARMa baby drugging organizations connected with the pregnancy & postpartum depression screening initiatives:
Would you give an SSRI to a newborn? A preemie? Maybe just stick it into their IV in the NICU and set up euthanasia wards instead of mother-baby postpartum units. Or mix the pills in with bullets and administer the drugs via gunshot to save yourselves some time.
No alleged “treatment” “benefit” to any psychotropic drug, particularly ineffective “antidepressants,” which work no better than a placebo, outweighs the tremendous risk to a helpless, defenseless baby of all the horrible and often deadly effects. Be real. There are so many natural ways to solve depression that do not hurt babies or mothers and certainly are non-addictive and do not risk inducing homicidal and suicidal ideation.
Go here to see memorial videos of some of the babies killed by psychotropic drugs during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
http://www.youtube.com/amyphilo
No psychotropic drug is approved for pregnant or nursing women. Any promotion of drugs to pregnant women or nursing women is off label. Off label drug promotion is illegal. Stop doing the bidding for pharma and taking their dirty blood money and feeling so good about yourselves for a “job” well done.
M Helm, MD
It is very, very unlikely that a pregnancy test for a patient for whom a pschiatric medication is being considered would ever require prior authorization. Since these medications like many others have risks in pregnancy, it should be considered malpractice to fail to order the test prior to prescribing. No primary care MD would dream of starting an ACE inhibitor, warfarin and several other medications without assessing pregnancy status in a woman of child-bearing years. I do not know if psychiatrists generally feel the same way about the risk of teratogenic effects of the medications they prescribe as do primary care physicians (or OB/Gyns).
As for Lisa VanS’ daughter - I’m wondering what use is intra-partum depression screening?
As for Ms Codey - if what is suggested is true, there seems to be a misdiagnosis. I would expect that postpartum depression should certainly resolve by the time the kid graduates from high school ;->
Evelyn Pringle
A good point is that SSRI are useless except sometimes in the most severely depressed people.
I did a calculation of numbers put out in a Sept 2009 paper by the usual SSRI peddlers to pregnant women and in 2003, over 500,000 women took antidepressants while pregnant.
It’s absolute crazy to think that that many women are so severely depressed that they need to put the fetus in the womb at risk, by taking drugs with no benefit.
And yet all we ever hear is that more pregnant women need treatment for depression.
Justice in MI
Lisa,
Can you provide a reference for this (the part about “Obamacare”:
“She also has a part in Obamacare, where every woman nation wide will be screened and prescribed medication”
JaT
Lisa, no kidding?
That’s like take this drug or leave your baby here. Geez.
Lisa Van Syckel
JaT,.. No Kidding!! A few weeks later I had, had a meeting with the hospital’s president and nursing supervisor, the outcome was no more postpartum screening in the delivery room.
Lisa Van Syckel
Justice, you can find the information on the Uniteforlife.org website.
Lisa Van Syckel
Helm MD, Postpartum depression screening is state mandated for all pregnant women, the sreening process starts in a woman’s first term of pregnancy, NJ is the only state that has this law in effect.
Mary Jo Codey along with Brooke Shield lobbyed for this mandate on the federal level. One of the Federal Senator’s, who happens to be an OB/GyN invoked clouture in the last Congress. A lot of information in regards to this is on the niteforlife.org’s wbsite. Its called the Melonie Stokes Act, the rest of us have given it the name of the Mother’s Act.
Evelyn Pringle, who has widely covered this can provide you with the money trail from Pharma to the special interest groups.
Evelyn Pringle
Another point never mentioned when these studies come out, which they do about every year or two, is the extra medical costs of caring for all the premature babies that do survive, even if they don’t have birth defects.
Neonatal intensive care does not come cheap. Of course the doctors and hospitals don’t mind.
Talk about depressing - the bills alone are probably enough to bring on a bout of PPD for both mom and dad.
Making sure the cycle of drug sales is endless
Amy Philo
http://uniteforlife.wordpress.com/ This is where the most up to date information on The MOTHERS Act and pregnancy / nursing information is published.
As a point of clarification, Senator Tom Coburn MD did not invoke cloture, he helped defeat cloture when Harry Reid invoked Cloture and tried to get The MOTHERS Act passed in an omnibus in July 2008 He is against The MOTHERS Act and is an OB/GYN.
Here is the story on that with full explanations of what happened.
http://tinyurl.com/yd7au8s
The most recent health care bill has the revised MOTHERS Act and the Mikulski screening amendment in it. I believe there are many other dangerous psych programs in it as well but The MOTHERS Act is one that will most certainly be bad for pregnant and new moms which represents one of the sickest pharmaceutical marketing schemes ever pushed in Congress in my opinion because of all the helpless babies who will suffer and die.
Here is some info on that:
http://tinyurl.com/y8ahfug
http://uniteforlife.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/year-end-new-year-in-review/
Fred Baughman, MD
Because no psychiatric condition/diagnosis is a demonstrable disease/abnormality, no psychiatric drug can ever be called (1) essential or (2) in the least justified in pregnancy or any woman who might become pregnant
JaT
I’m a little puzzled as to why this is being called The Mothers Act. It has equally horrific consequences for fathers. First because of the intrusive nature of it all- and second because how is a man supposed to feel about his wife if she fails in the screening process? And what if the couple has an older child that does some weird thing (as kids sometimes do) that makes the investigator think- this woman should really not have another child unless she’s getting some kind of “help”.
Calling it The Mothers Act might have men thinking it will not affect them. I think that is a mistake.
Evelyn Pringle
The Mothers Act promoters claim fathers suffer from PPD and other “mood” disorders as well, and at a high rate.
That’s how ridiculous and all encompassing this particular disease mongering campaign has become.
They’ve been trying to pass this bill for more than 8 years.
Also, the notion that they will only be diagnosing people with PPD is the biggest con. This gang has a new field called “reproductive psychiatry” and they will be screening for a whole list of pregnancy related “mood and anxiety” disorders.
Go check out their websites if you don’t want to take my word for it.
And like Lisa said above, the screening starts during pregnancy.
If the Mothers Act does pass, good luck to the health care professionals tasked with informing women that the government will now force them to undergo screening for mental illness.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall watching this event with some of the women I know. In fact, I’d pay money to watch.
Lisa Van Syckel
Amy, Thanks for the clarification, I do manage at times, to mess up.