Birth Defects Such As Developmental Delays May Be Associated With Paxil Use
3rd September 2011 by Babies No Comments
Growing up doesn’t only mean that one has to grow taller and bigger. It also means that other developmental milestones are achieved. 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, some children are still considered to be delayed in their developmental milestones. A lot of factors can be connected on why this happens including the use of the antidepressant Paxil during pregnancy. Paxil has also been associated with antidepressant withdrawal in infants.
Cases of Developmental Delays Related to Paxil Use
Developmental delays may be very hard to point out given that each child has his/her developmental timeline. 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 made on 6-month and 19-month developmental milestones from the Danish National Birth Cohort. The study has 81, 042 women who don’t have depression, 489 women with symptoms of depression but are not undergoing drug therapy, and 415 women who suffer from depression and are taking antidepressants. Among the women who take medications, 336 are SSRI users and among them, 76 use Paxil.
Babies born to women who took Paxil had remarkable delays in development such as with speech, walking and sitting upright and other cognitive developments. Boys are also observed to have more delays than girls. The researchers cannot confirm if these delays are permanent or reversible. The possibility that these delays may affect the child later in life may happen. Taking Paxil when pregnant has significantly raised some concerns as birth defects can be one of the Paxil side effects.
