Post # 7: summary of a career-related article from The Guardian

Antidepressants linked to premature birth risk

In the actual life, we have a lot of problems and many people start to take antidepressants, but how these drugs affect a pregnancy?
Women from a hospital in Aarhus, Denmark, participated in a study about this topic and the results where published by the American Medical Association.
A new study found that mothers who take antidepressants during the pregnancy have more risk of having a premature birth. The SSRIs (the scientific name of antidepressants) should be prescribed by a doctor only if “potential benefit outweighs risk”, but there’s little research on how safe these drugs are during pregnancy.
We know that SSRIs entry to the baby's bloodstream and that may cause some withdrawal symptoms after birth. Some research also suggests that babies may be more at risk of heart defects if their mother takes an SSRI called paroxetine in the first three months of pregnancy, although this problem is not common.
The new study says that women taking an SSRI had twice the risk of a premature birth. On average, women gave birth four or five days sooner if they took an SSRI while pregnant, but the results don't tell us what the actual risk is.
About the 16% of babies whose mothers had taken SSRIs need treatment in an intensive care unit, compared with the 7 % of babies whose mothers were healthy.
The study also included a group of women who had mental health problems but who were not taking an SSRI, we can suppose the possibility that mental health issues affected the baby's health rather than antidepressants. But the research doesn’t tell us the risks of SSRIs compare with the dangers of untreated depression.

Complete article at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/besttreatments/2009/oct/06/antidepressants-linked-to-premature-birth-risk