Study linking antidepressants to autism shows Big Pharma, Feds need to do a better job protecting consumers
December 16, 2015
Like the vast expansion in the use of opoid painkillers such as OxyContin, health care providers and pharmaceutical companies are responsible for millions of Americans taking antidepressants to attempt to treat depression.
Now, a large study conducted by researchers at the University of Montreal shows using antidepressants during pregnancy greatly increases the risk of autism in the child.
The study established that taking antidepressants during the second or third trimester of pregnancy almost doubles the risk that the child will be diagnosed with autism by age 7, especially if the mother takes selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. SSRIs are prescription drugs such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft.
With the World Health Organization indicating that depression will be the second leading cause of death by 2020, antidepressants will likely continue to be widely prescribed, including during pregnancy.
However, some in the medical community are calling for the use of other methods to treat depression.
Antidepressants are making Americans worse not better, Stephen Bezruchka, M.D., University of Washington professor and emergency room physician, said in his book “Is America Driving You Crazy?”
America has the highest rate of mental illness in the world, Bezruchka said. The number of Americans suffering from mental illness has nearly doubled since 1987. That's when Prozac, the first of the "wonder drugs," was introduced.
He believes America’s drug-based system of care is fueling this epidemic. The drugs used to treat depression and mental illness cause problems when used long term.
Bezruchka, thinks counseling, better care for babies and young children, and better mental health programs should be emphasized rather than such strong reliance on antidepressants.
In a Huffington Post article, Adam Urato, M.D., a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Tufts Medical Center, said the research is a wake up call about how mental health care in America is approached.
"We in the United States, and I think worldwide, have developed a chemical approach to mental health," said Urato.
This approach is lucrative to the pharmaceutical industry, he said, but it’s also simply more convenient and cost-effective to send a woman to have a short visit with a psychiatrist and walk away with a prescription instead of investing in regular psychotherapy, which is a non-chemical yet highly effective way to treat mild to moderate depression.
In the University of Montreal research, Professor Anick Bérard studied the medical records on 145,456 pregnancies. Her findings were published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.
Bérard and her colleagues studied children from conception to age 10. In addition to information about the mother's use of antidepressants and the child's diagnosis of autism, the medical records included details that enabled the team to determine the specific impact of antidepressants.
In the study, 0.72 percent or 1,054 of the children were diagnosed with autism at an average of 4.5 years of age. Among the 2,532 babies whose mothers took an SSRI during her second and/or third trimester of pregnancy, 31 infants or 1.2 percent were diagnosed with autism some time in his or her first six years of life. About 40 babies or 1 percent whose mothers took an SSRI in her first trimester of pregnancy were diagnosed with autism.
Autism among children has increased from four in 10,000 children in 1966 to 100 in 10,000 today. While that increase can be attributed to better detection and widening criteria for diagnosis, the researchers said environmental factors are also playing a part.
“It is biologically plausible that antidepressants are causing autism if used at the time of brain development in the womb, as serotonin is involved in numerous pre- and postnatal developmental processes, including cell division, the migration of neuros, cell differentiation, and synaptogenesis – the creation of links between brain cells,” Bérard said.
“Some classes of antidepressants work by inhibiting serotonin (SSRIs and some other antidepressant classes), which will have a negative impact on the ability of the brain to fully develop and adapt in-utero,” she said.
About five years ago, a small study showed women who took antidepressants during pregnancy were twice as likely to have a child with autism or a related disorder. It was the first to examine the relationship between antidepressants and autism risk.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should have begun to look at this issue then. Having an autistic child is devastating to a family. The FDA has a responsibility to protect consumers and investigate the effect antidepressants are having on the health of American consumers.
The pharmaceutical industry also has the responsibility to produce and sell safer drugs, and not rush to the market with drugs just because they can make huge profits.
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