Paxil Use By Pregnant Women May Cause Developmental Delays Which Are Considered As Birth Defects
15th September 2011 by Babies No Comments
Growing is not only talking about getting big and tall. It also includes the achievement of milestones in other developmental domains. Each domain has developmental milestones that should be achieved and the four domains are: Intellectual, Language, Socio-emotional and Physical. Developmental milestones are created to serve as guide for the “normal” and not as something that would be a source of worry for the parents or caregivers. Each child is unique therefor they have different timelines in completing their milestones. However, no matter how varied the timeline of children are, there are some that have considerable delays in development. A lot of factors can be connected on why this happens including the use of the antidepressant Paxil during pregnancy. Paxil has also been reported to be one of the cause on why some infants experience antidepressant withdrawal.
Basis on Paxil Causing Developmental Delays
Developmental delays might be difficult to diagnose since each child is unique and has his/her own time in achieving the milestones. The link between developmental delays and the use of SSRI’s was also not proven by other researches. However a study conducted by Lars Henning Pedersen, Tine Brink Henriksen, and Jørn Olsen which was published in the medical journal, Pediatrics, gave the basis for delayed connection and its relation with the use of SSRI’s during the 2nd or 3rd trimester of pregnancy. The study was conducted on 6-month and 19-month developmental milestones from the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC). The population of the study consisted of 81,042 women without depression, 489 women with signs of depression but are not taking antidepressants and 415 women who are suffering from depression and under medications. Among those who are taking antidepressants, SSRI users have a total number of 336 and 76 of them take Paxil.
Delays in development were most noted in babies born to pregnant women who took Paxil and the delays are in speech, motor functioning such as walking and sitting upright and other cognitive developments. Boys are also observed to have more delays than girls. These developmental delays weren’t identified by the researchers if they are permanent or reversible. The possibility that these delays may affect the child later in life may happen. The use of Paxil in pregnancy has been widely talked about especially with all the Paxil side effects being raised up which include birth defects.
