Some SSRIs may raise birth defects risk when taken early in pregnancy

But it provides strong support for some links suggested by previous studies on drugs collectively known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), she says. The Use of the SSRI drugs Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft at least once in the period from one month before conception through the third month of pregnancy was recorded, Reuters reported.

Their analysis included 17,952 mothers of infants with birth defects and 9,857 mothers of infants without birth defects, born between 1997 and 2009.

(CNN) – A new study found a slight increase in birth defects among babies born to women who took two popular antidepressants.

“It is important to keep in mind that the linkages might have other explanations such as underlying diseases among women who use SSRIs or other unmeasured factors”, said lead study author Jennita Reefhuis, PhD, of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities in Atlanta, GA, in a press release. The defects include problems with the heart, brain, skull and abdominal wall.

Because this is an association study, it doesn’t prove that the medications caused birth defects.

“Additional studies of specific SSRI treatments during pregnancy and birth defects are needed to allow women and their health care providers to make better informed decision regarding treatment”, Dr. Reefhuis said.

The researchers looked for evidence of elevated rates of 14 different birth defects in the offspring, then looked to see if the women had been using SSRIs during their first trimester of pregnancy.

The authors called the findings about Zoloft “reassuring” because the drug was used by some 40 percent of the women in the study who said they had used an antidepressant in early pregnancy. But for other expectant mothers, the added stress, along with physical and hormonal changes, increases the risk of clinical depression. If you just read the abstract or try to work through its elegant statistical analysis, it’s tempting to accept the results from a paper published in a highly regarded journal at face value.

“Continued scrutiny of the association between SSRIs and birth defects is warranted”

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Birth defects are alarmingly common, affecting one in every 33 babies born in the United States but scientists are still in the early stages of determining what causes a lot of them.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning in 20005 that the risk for birth defects, and heart defects in particular, could be increased by Paxil. “So women who are pregnant, or thinking of becoming pregnant, shouldn’t stop or start any antidepressants without speaking to a health care provider”.

The researchers found that the risk of birth effects was related to two antidepressants – Prozac, or fluoxetine, and Paxil, or paroxetine. For heart defects the potential risk went from 10 to 24 per 10,000 births.

In this latest study, researchers in the US and Canada, wanted to find out if the association between five commonly prescribed SSRIs (citalopram, escitalopram, fluoxetine, paroxetine, and sertraline) and birth defects was real.

Reefhuis also cautioned that it’s not certain that antidepressants directly boost the risk of birth defects.