Research Roundup: Should Pregnant Moms Go Off Their Meds?

babble.com - Posted by heatherturgeon on Feb 25th, 2011 at 4:05 pm

Weighing the benefits and risks for baby

It’s an essential discourse for a lot of moms: should you stay on medicine medications while pregnant?

This hebdomad the bureau issued a warning to doctors most meaningful women on antipsychotics (a collection of medications used primarily for bipolar modify and schizophrenia), saying that newborns whose mothers were attractive these drugs were at venture for having deviant muscle movements and withdrawal symptoms, including agitation, sleepiness, tremors, pain breathed and eating after birth.

But it’s a complicated discourse — what should a mom do if meds are helping her but she’s worried most the baby? Here’s what the investigate says:

These are whatever highlights most the risks of psychotropic drugs in pregnancy:

• Last year, a study in the journal Pediatrics of 82,000 babies whose moms were attractive antidepressants institute a offense retard in motor development: the infants sat and walked almost a period after on average.
• Paxil (a modify of antidepressant titled an SSRI) has been institute to process the venture of craniate hunch defects when it’s condemned in the first trimester.
• Other antidepressants, same Prosac, Celexa, and Zoloft, increases the venture of lung problems when condemned in the terminal half of pregnancy.
• In general, lithium is considered more of a teratogen (something that disrupts craniate development) and doctors encourage all women on it to use birth control to refrain effort pregnant.

Those are whatever of the risks of attractive the drugs, but it’s not that simple. For some women, the venture of not attractive their drug outweighs this. Most investigate finds that antidepressants (except Paxil) are overall innocuous and the risks are relatively small. Meanwhile, a mom with a history of field depressive or bipolar modify is more probable to develop postpartum depression (a venture to both mom and baby), so existence on drug could be the safer route.

In my training I’ve seen the arrange of cases: from moms with temperate symptoms of depression or anxiety who deprive gently (under their doctor’s guidance) before disagreeable to get pregnant, to women with nonindulgent medicine symptoms that would place the child at greater venture than the meds themselves — with those moms I encourage staying healthy, modify if that means continuing medication. In other words, there is no simple respond most medicine drugs in maternity — it’s a cost-benefit analysis.

But one abstract that some women don’t undergo is that psychotherapy should be finished by a specialist who specializes in maternity and postpartum issues. Not a generalized student or modify a generalized psychiatrist. So the student that formal your drug before maternity strength not be completely confident of treating you while you are pregnant.

Do you hit some experience with this perplexity of drugs in pregnancy? Please deal your thoughts.

Image: flickr

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