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Tuesday 15 Dec 2015 - 13:36 Makkah mean time-4-3-1437
Antidepressants (Image from Internet)
Ottawa (IINA) – Canadian researchers have warned against the use of antidepressants during pregnancy, unveiling research that finds the drugs are strongly linked to an increased risk of autism, Canadian CTV News reported.
The new study found that women taking antidepressants during the second or third trimester of pregnancy had almost double the risk of having a child who would be diagnosed with autism by age 7.
The research team, led by Prof. Anick Berard, a specialist in the safety of medication in pregnancy, looked at data from the Quebec Pregnancy Cohort, focusing on more than 145,000 children up to the age of 10. The databank recorded several categories of information, including the mother's age at birth, her history of depression and use of antidepressants, the child's family history of autism, the family's socio-economic status, and other factors.
The team looked at which mothers had had one or more prescriptions for antidepressants filled during their second or third trimesters of pregnancy – a time that is a critical period for fetal brain development.
The researchers then looked at which children had been diagnosed with autism, atypical autism, Asperger's syndrome, or a pervasive developmental disorder. Among the 145,000 children, 1,054 children were diagnosed with autism by 4.5 years of age.
The researchers concluded that mothers who had taken antidepressants during their pregnancies had an 87 percent increased risk of having a child diagnosed with autism compared to those who didn't use the drugs. The full results are published in JAMA Pediatrics.
AB/IINA
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