Anti-depressants and Newborns

Posting Date: 08/18/2003

Newborns Affected by Moms? SSRIs, But Symptoms Short-Lived

Jim Rosack

New research indicates that mothers taking SSRIs during the last trimester of pregnancy increase their newborns? risk of "serotonin overstimulation" in the first days of life.

Finnish researchers have found that infants born to mothers who take SSRIs during the last trimester of their pregnancy may exhibit "serotonergic central nervous system adverse effects" during the first days of life. These adverse effects, however, are short-lived.

In the report, which appeared in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers from the departments of pharmacology and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Turku in Finland prospectively followed 20 pregnant women taking either citalopram (Forest?s Celexa) or fluoxetine (Lilly?s Prozac and generics) for major depression or panic disorder and compared their infants with those of 20 women who had not taken any psychotropic medications during pregnancy.

Infants born to women taking SSRIs were found to have a fourfold higher incidence of serotonergic symptoms?most notably restlessness, tremor, and rigidity?in the first four days following birth, compared with babies born to mothers who had not taken SSRIs. In all the infants exposed to SSRIs, symptoms had markedly decreased by two weeks of age and had all but disappeared at two months of age. Notably, serotonergic symptoms were not completely absent in those infants of mothers not exposed to SSRIs.

"The study represents a novel approach to determine whether SSRIs in pregnancy have any effects on the fetus and or neonate," said Zachary Stowe, M.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at Emory University School of medicine and a noted American expert on the effects of SSRI use during pregnancy.

Stowe emphasized that the study focused on the two SSRIs?citalopram and fluoxetine?that have the highest rate of crossing the placenta into fetal circulation. These babies "typically receive about three quarters of the mom?s dose. In contrast, medications like paroxetine and sertraline cross the placenta significantly less," Stowe told Psychiatric News.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3   previous | next

Email this page  Printer Friendly Bookmark this page