UCSD/Boston University find antidepressants may af...( A University of California San Diego (...),Health

A University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine collaborative study with Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center found an increased risk of persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN) in newborns of mothers who used certain commonly prescribed antidepressants in late pregnancy. The results of the study will be published in the February 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

According to the study authors, PPHN is a serious condition that typically involves severe respiratory failure in a newborn infant and requires immediate treatment. The condition occurs in about one to two per thousand babies. The new study findings indicate that pregnant women who take one of the antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft, in the second half of pregnancy have a small but significantly increased chance of delivering an infant who develops PPHN. The study found that exposure to antidepressants other than SSRIs did not pose a risk for PPHN. In addition, women who discontinued use of SSRIs in the first half of pregnancy did not have an increased risk of delivering a child with the condition.

These findings may be important for pregnant women and clinicians when making decisions about the most appropriate treatments for depression late in pregnancy.

Lead author on the study, Christina Chambers, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Departments of Pediatrics and Family and Preventive Medicine at UCSD, worked with a team of investigators who identified at birth 377 infants with PPHN and 836 normal newborns from 97 delivery hospitals in four metropolitan centers in the U.S. and Canada between 1998 and 2003. The study was part of the ongoing Birth Defects Surveillance Program being conducted by the Slone Epidemiology Center with the collaboration of 17 San Diego County hospitals including UCSD Medical Center.

Within six months after birth, the researchers examined the record
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Contact: Jeffree Itrich
jitrich@ucsd.edu
619-543-6163
University of California - San Diego
8-Feb-2006

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