Posted by Larry Hoover on December 30, 2008, at 10:36:53
In reply to SSRI during pregnancy leads to depressed offspring, posted by linkadge on December 27, 2008, at 22:22:13
...in mice, which were injected with the drugs. And the negative outcomes associated with one of the SSRIs did not occur with the other, so the blanket reference to SSRI in your subject line was misleading.
The dilated cardiomyopathy associated with in-utero fluoxetine (Prozac) exposure has not, to my knowledge, ever been reported previously in the literature. That alone makes the finding suspect, as breeding mice were surely used to test the safety of the drug, prior to any human exposure, and at relative doses much higher than were used here. This raises the question of whether the strain, the genetic heritage, of these particular mice made them vulnerable. Moreover, this cardiac abnormality has, to my knowledge, never been reported in human offspring who have been exposed to fluoxetine in utero, at incidences beyond chance findings.
The anxious/depressive behaviours of the mature exposed mice also only occurred in one experimental group.....not an SSRI finding, but a drug-specific one.
Follow-up developmental studies of children exposed to antidepressants in utero have revealed no behavioural or mood-related difficulties.
I think it is inappropriate to generalize from one rodent study to humans, or from one drug in a class to all drugs in that class. The findings are not consistent with what we've observed in humans, but increased surveillance would still be a reasonable response.
Regards,
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:871109
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081223/msgs/871409.html