Pregnancy & Birth Defects

Dear Bob-- I have been working again, taking temporary assignments filling in for other physicians and working in urgent cares while I get my practice...

Bob-- Here is a letter that I wrote several months ago in response to an early reader of my blog here. She expressed concern about...

A study of the Swedish medical birth registry, conducted by researchers from Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.A., found a 3.3X greater risk of...

An important new research paper was published this week on the topic of antidepressant use during pregnancy and preterm birth.  The issue is a crucial one as preterm birth (i.e. birth at less than 37 weeks gestational age) is one of the most challenging problems facing the obstetrical community today.  Rates of preterm birth have been increasing over the past two decades.  Babies born early have increased risks of morbidity and mortality.  At the same time, rates of antidepressant use during pregnancy have increased dramatically.

The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA is one of the premier centers for brain research in the country, and so when the...

Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), authored an editorial for BMJ this month warning that the opioid abuse epidemic could have dangerous consequences for pregnant women. While the effects of opioid exposure on the developing brain are yet unknown, research suggests that infants may suffer from withdrawal syndrome, nervous system defects, and impaired attachment with the mother.

Nineteen defective drug product liability cases against Prizer have been filed in West Virginia state court by mothers alleging that their children suffered from...

A new study published this week in JAMA Psychiatry indicates that infants are more likely to develop speech or language disorders if they are exposed to antidepressants during pregnancy.

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was just nineteen. I am forty-three now, and I have recovered – and I use the term...

In a prospective cohort study of 466 pregnant women over 10 years, researchers at the California Teratogen Information Service found that women exposed to...

A detailed meta-analysis of the published research on women taking antidepressants during pregnancy finds that the rate of preterm birth is nearly doubled in the third...

The use by mothers of any of four major classes of psychiatric medications during pregnancy significantly raises the risk that their babies will be born with low birth weights and will need to be hospitalized.

In addition to the increased risk of respiratory and heart troubles known to accompany SSRI use during pregnancy, SSRIs have been linked to an...

School aged children exposed prenatally to psychotropic medication show poorer outcomes in cognitive ability.

One reason that depression is linked to later psychological problems in children could be because depressed mothers often have less healthy diets.

Researchers from Canada find the risk of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn is increased for infants exposed to SSRIs in late pregnancy. Results...

"A Pfizer Inc. report shows a scientist warned executives last year about a potential link between the anti-depressant drug Zoloft and birth defects."

Maternal antenatal depression is highly correlated with a history of the mother having been mistreated in childhood, and these two facts significantly increase the...

I remember looking out of my living room window, drawing on my connection to all the women in the world who had felt this energy before, all that were in that moment, and all that would in time to come. This energy, this incredible power, was like a wave that I was riding for a brief window of my life, and sharing with my baby to move us through time into a new type of union. To me, this wasn’t anything to resist, to be afraid of, or to suppress. All I had to do was be there to witness, and keep my mind from getting in the way.

Swedish researchers have found that pregnant women who take SSRI antidepressant after gestational week 20 more double the risk that their babies will suffer...

According to the CDC, January is National Birth Defects Prevention Month. New research continues to link various SSRI antidepressants with birth defects and neurological abnormalities in newborns. The latest study to examine this topic, a meta-analysis led by Dr. Anick Bérard, found a 23% increased risk for birth defects, and a 28% increased risk for heart problems, in the infants of women who took the SSRI Paxil (paroxetine) during their first trimester.

Women in Malaysia exposed to intimate partner violence are twice as likely to experience postnatal depression.

The first of more than 1,000 lawsuits about Zoloft and birth defects has gotten underway.

On Monday April 14th, an important new study from Harrington et al was published in the journal Pediatrics (the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.)  The study was designed to examine prenatal use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and the risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and other developmental delays (DDs).  Nine hundred sixty-six mother child pairs were studied and the researchers found that in boys, the association between maternal SSRI use in the first trimester and autism was very strong (OR 3.22).  The association between third-trimester maternal SSRI use and developmental delay was even stronger, with an odds ratio of 4.98.

In a study of 69,448 pregnant women with depression, researchers from the Harvard school of public health found that use of SSRI (selective serotonin...