SSRI: 100-500% Increased Risk of Heart Birth Defects If Taken In Early Pregnancy

NOTE FROM DR. TRACY (www.drugawareness.org): This new study SHOULD stop the Mother’s Act dead in its tracks! The Mother’s Act is designed to medicate pregnant and nursing mothers for depression and we know what they medicate them with – these drugs that they have just shown amazingly damaging effects upon the heart of the fetus!

ANY YOUNG WOMAN WHO INTENDS TO HAVE A FAMILY SHOULD BE WARNED OF THIS POSSIBILITY OF SERIOUS LIFE THREATING BIRTH DEFECTS IN HER OFFSPRING BEFORE EVER BEING STARTED ON AN SSRI ANTIDEPRESSANT!! Marketing these drugs to this age group should be considered criminal when you look at what this study shows to be the risks to the children born to these mothers.

And if you think this does not affect you, think again. You need to see what these children go through (if they survived their mother’s use of these drugs) throughout their lives due to their mother’s use of these drugs! Who do you think ends up paying the bills for the numerous reconstructive surgeries, the lifetime of medications and medical treatment? We do. All of us in higher insurance rates, disability payments, etc., etc., etc.

PLEASE CAREFULLY EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING RESULTS OF THIS STUDY AND SHARE IT WITH EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! Doing so may spare at least one baby from this horror.

Here is just one small example: http://bigpharmavictim.blogspot.com Manie’s mother was given Paxil and assured it would be okay as so many mothers are told. Her infant son, Manie, was born with Transposition of the Great Arteries and had to have open heart surgery when he was only 8 days old. The surgery lasted 12 hours.
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Paragraph one reads: “If you take antidepressants such as fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) early in your pregnancy, you may be doubling the risk that your newborn will be born with a heart defect, according to a new study.”

Paragraph four reads: “Along with fluoxetine, sertraline (marketed as Zoloft) and citalopram (marketed as Celexa) seemed to increase the risk more than others, as did using more than one antidepressant at a time, according to the report in the September 25th Online First issue of BMJ.”

Paragraph six reads: “Sertraline [Zoloft] more than tripled the risk, while citalopram [Celexa] more than doubled it. Using more than one SSRI nearly quintupled the risk of the heart defect.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58O39F20090925

Antidepressants in pregnancy up heart defect risk
Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:58am EDT Email | Print | Share| Reprints | Single Page[-] Text [+]

By Anthony J. Brown, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – If you take antidepressants such as fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) early in your pregnancy, you may be doubling the risk that your newborn will be born with a heart defect, according to a new study.

However, the vast majority of children born to women who take such antidepressants – known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – do not have such defects, the researchers are quick to note.

Earlier studies have tied SSRIs during pregnancy to heart defects, but also to even more serious birth defects. According to the new study of nearly half a million children born in Denmark between 1996 and 2003, however, only heart defects are likely to be associated with the antidepressants, note co-author Dr. Lars Henning Pedersen, from Aarhus University, Denmark, and colleagues.

Along with fluoxetine, sertraline (marketed as Zoloft) and citalopram (marketed as Celexa) seemed to increase the risk more than others, as did using more than one antidepressant at a time, according to the report in the September 25th Online First issue of BMJ.

Overall, SSRI use in early pregnancy, defined as 28 days before to 112 days after conception, doubled the risk of a particular kind of heart defect involving a piece of tissue that separates parts of the heart.

Sertraline more than tripled the risk, while citalopram more than doubled it. Using more than one SSRI nearly quintupled the risk of the heart defect.

However, the number of children born with such defects was still quite small: For about every 250 pregnant women who did not take SSRIs, one infant was born with the defect, while about two were born with the defect for every 250 women who took one SSRI, and four for every 200 mothers who took more than one.

Pedersen told Reuters Health that the results surprised the team.

Still, in an accompanying editorial, Dr. Christina Chambers, from the University of California, San Diego, comments that doctors and patients “need to balance the small risks associated with SSRIs against those associated with undertreatment or no treatment.”

SOURCE: BMJ, online September 25, 2009.