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Re: antidepressant use in pregnancy

Posted by Larry Hoover on September 13, 2004, at 9:55:55

In reply to antidepressant use in pregnancy, posted by Larry Hoover on September 7, 2004, at 11:46:25

Seems like stress during pregnancy has short-term and long-term effects on infants, including a 17-point decrease in IQ. The full-test version of this article attributes this effect to high maternal cortisol, which we know occurs in untreated depression, but which is substantially controlled by antidepressant therapy. Dr. King said, in an interview, "....we need to be really careful with pregnant women when something bad happens..." Dr. La-Plante emphasized that every effort should be expended in making expectant mothers more stable and comfortable.


Pediatr Res. 2004 Jul 7 [Epub ahead of print]

Stress During Pregnancy Affects General Intellectual and Language Functioning in Human Toddlers.

Laplante DP, Barr RG, Brunet A, Galbaud Du Fort G, Meaney M, Saucier JF, Zelazo PR, King S.

Douglas Hospital Research Centre, McGill University, Verdun, Canada H4H 1R3; Department of Pediatrics, Montreal Children's Hospital and McGill University, Montreal, Canada H3H 1P3; Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada H3A 1A1; Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, Montreal, Canada H3A 1A2; Department of Psychiatry, Ste. Justine Hospital and Universite de Montreal, Montreal, Canada H3T 1C5; and Department of Psychology P.R.Z.], McGill University, Montreal, Canada H3A 1B1.

Prenatal maternal stress has been shown to impair functioning in nonhuman primate offspring. Little is known about the effects of prenatal stress on intellectual and language development in humans because it is difficult to identify sufficiently large samples of pregnant women who have been exposed to an independent stressor. We took advantage of a natural disaster (January 1998 ice storm in Quebec, Canada) to determine the effect of the objective severity of pregnant women's stress exposure on general intellectual and language development of their children. Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI) scores and parent-reported language abilities of 58 toddlers of mothers who were exposed to varying levels of prenatal stress were obtained at 2 y of age. The hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that the toddlers' birth weight and age at testing accounted for 12.0% and 14.8% of the variance in the Bayley MDI scores and in productive language abilities, respectively. More important, the level of prenatal stress exposure accounted for an additional 11.4% and 12.1% of the variance in the toddlers' Bayley MDI and productive language abilities and uniquely accounted for 17.3% in the variance of their receptive language abilities. The more severe the level of prenatal stress exposure, the poorer the toddlers' abilities. The level of prenatal stress exposure accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in the three dependent variables above and beyond that already accounted for by non-ice storm-related factors. We suspect that high levels of prenatal stress exposure, particularly early in the pregnancy, may negatively affect the brain development of the fetus, reflected in the lower general intellectual and language abilities in the toddlers.

 

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poster:Larry Hoover thread:387622
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040909/msgs/390253.html