Pregnancy & Birth Defects

This series of blogs outlines a scandal that brings out the limitations of RCTs and evidence based medicine. Here are the first four installments, with two more to come shortly.

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

ADHD behaviors were linked to the presence of both high levels of pollutants and persistent economic deprivation at birth and through childhood.

A study of 228,876 pregnancies, published in the July issue of the American journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, finds that maternal antidepressant use is...

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...

Researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands, publishing online June 20 in Neuroscience, found that prenatal fluoxetine (Prozac) differentially affected the development of glucocorticoid receptors...

A study of 106,000 pregnant women with a diagnosis of mood or anxiety disorder, by researchers from Harvard, Duke, Michigan State and the university...

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

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

Bob-- I saw a thirty-four year old woman today for a follow-up visit regarding post-partum depression. She delivered her second child two months ago, and...

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

A scientific review says we need to know much more about the risks of nursing mothers taking SSRIs.

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...

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

Danish research found a significantly increased risk of congenital heart defects in both the 4,183 pregnancies exposed to SSRIs throughout the first trimester and the...

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

Lawyers in St. Louis have filed a lawsuit against Pfizer that alleges 18 children were born with birth defects caused by the antidepressant Zoloft...

Last year (2012) the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a study from 5 Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) based on more...

A new study has reinforced earlier warnings that taking SSRI antidepressants late in pregnancy appears to put mothers at a slightly increased risk of having newborns with persistent pulmonary hypertension.

“The National Women’s Health Network launched the 'Pass on the Pink Pill – Or Pass Out' campaign, to warn women of the marginal benefits...

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...

Continuing to take antidepressants during pregnancy was associated with higher rates of depressive relapses and hospitalizations than discontinuing.

Researchers believe they have found "the smoking gun" that links common contaminants leaching from plastics to "adverse brain development and hyperactivity."

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.

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.