Antidepressants Increase The Risk Of A Miscarriage
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 2nd, 2010 // 7:51 am
Any of the commonly used antidepressants was associated with a 68 percent relative increase in the overall risk of a miscarriage, and there were significant associations with the use Pfizer’s Effexor and GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil, according to a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Also worth noting: the use of more than one class of antidepressant doubled the risk.
The study examined 5,124 women who suffered miscarriages. A total of 284, or 5.5 percent of the women who had a miscarriage had at least one prescription for an antidepressant filled during pregnancy, compared with 1,401, or 2.7 percent of the matched control group. The authors noted that previous studies yielded inconsistent findings. There have also been lawsuits over links between Glaxo and birth defects (see this). The Paxil and Effexor labeling mentions abortion was a rare side effect (page 34 and page 42, respectively).
Why was the study conducted? The authors noted that one of four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, but that most studies of antidepressants never looked at this as a primary outcome and had small samples. As a result, they “lacked statistical power or had inherent biases owing to unmeasured confounders.” The study was conducted between 1998 and 2003 in order to obtain info that was independent of regulatory warnings about antidepressants that were issued in 2004 (here is the study).
Some of the findings: women who had miscarriages were more likely to be older, living in an urban setting, receiving social assistance, diagnosed with depression or anxiety, visited a psychiatrist during the year before pregnancy and had a “longer duration” of exposure to antidepressants during the year before pregnancy.
“These results, which suggest an overall class effect of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, are highly robust given the large number of users studied,” Anick Bérard, one of the authors and a consultant for a plaintiff in the litigation involving Paxil, tells The Telegraph. “Physicians who have patients of child-bearing age taking antidepressants or have pregnant patients who require antidepressant therapy early in pregnancy discuss the risks and benefits with them.”
Salmon
I made the following comment on Pharmagossip yesterday more than 12 hours before I saw this information.
http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/2010/06/bbc-news-shipman-coroner-says-all-baby.html
Anonymous said…
Deaths of infants due to SIDS increased by 60% at the time of introduction of SSRI’s.
SSRI’s are documented to cause PAH (see FDA website).
Most cases of neonatal PAH are misdiagnosed as SIDS.
SSRI’s and atypical antipsychotics cause neonatal death in animal pups in cross fostering studies, i.e. don’t expose mothers or pups during pregnancy, but exposure via breast feeding when moms are not sickened results in massive death among newborn animals.
Is there a connection?
Salmon
harpy
good thing we now know that talk therapy works just as well, if not better once all factors are considered, than SSRIs and SNRIs.
patrons99
Salmon - “Is there a connection?” Most interesting comment!
There are some who have suggested a possible link between SIDS and the pediatric vaccination schedule.
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/sids.html
Is SIDS a “vaccinosis”?
I agree with the coroner in the Shipman case, that all baby deaths should be probed.
SSRI’s, atypical antipsychotics, and neonatal “jabs” are ALL possible suspects. Unless you are looking for the bodies, no one will notice. Here we have dead bodies, so it makes perfect sense to look bewards as to potential etiologies…all etiologies are in play…none should be excluded, if we really want to find a cause.
I wonder if post-partum depressed moms, who start SSRIs after delivery and breast fed, show increase in SIDS deaths.
patrons99
gasp, typo: “…so it makes perfect sense to look [backwards] as to potential etiologies…” Sorry.
Ginger Breggin
Exposure to SSRI antidepressants in utero are known to cause birth defects, neonatal withdrawal symptoms, and brain damage. Despite alarming statistics they continue to be recommended to pregnant women. My husband, Peter R Breggin, MD, and I have published a scientific paper detailing these issues: http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=53&Itemid=37
I hope we can alert the public to avert the tragedies of birth defects and miscarriages that occur due to SSRI antidepressant use during pregnancy.