A new study reports that pregnant women who take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs (SSRIs) such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro are up to three times as likely to have a premature birth than other women.

Science Daily Report

The study, which appeared in the September/October issue of Women's Health Issues, was conducted at the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Researchers looked at 3,020 questionnaires from the Pregnancy Outcomes & Community Health Study which asked women who were older than 15 years of age, without diabetic history and who were between 15 to 27 weeks pregnant about depression, SSRIs and their delivery dates.

They found that 11% of respondents (335 women) delivered their babies prematurely. Among the women who reported suffering from depression during their pregnancy, approximately 75% had a history of depression and 62% of the women took SSRI medication during the first half of their pregnancy. According to Science Daily, preterm deliveries were generally prompted by complications that included preeclampsia, poor fetal growth or acute hemorrhage.

SSRIs such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro are the most common antidepressants taken by women in the United States. In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynocologists (AGOC) estimates that between 14% and 23% of all pregnant women experience depression. Unfortunately, SSRIs taken during pregnancy have been linked to serious birth defects as well.

SSRIs linked to birth defects

Studies have linked SSRIs to many severe birth defects such as cardiac type defects, ventricular septal defects and atrial septal defects which generally occur when antidepressants are used in the first trimester of pregnancy. Other serious birth defects include craniosynostosis (a defect which occurs when the skull does not form correctly), club foot, limb abnormalities and persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN).

Medical malpractice attorneys say that several hundreds of birth injury lawsuits have been filed against manufacturers alleging that they knew about the association between their drugs and birth injuries, but failed to warn consumers about those dangers.

The first birth injury lawsuit to go to trial against anti-depressant manufacturers over birth injuries recently resulted in a $2.5 million verdict against GlaxoSmithKline for Paxil use after a pregnant woman was given the drug and her baby was born with serious and permanent heart defects.