They Say: Prozac When Pregnant Can Cause Heart Problems in Babies

This is a case of ‘you’re damned if you don’t',  but really ‘damned if you do’. And in this example, you won’t be the only one who’s damned.  Jezebel found on Science Daily that pregnant woman who take fluoxetine, which is the generic name for good old Prozac, are four times as likely to have a baby born with a heart problem. 

According to this new report, pregnant ladies who take the anti-depressent paroxetine are three times as likely to have babies with heart issues.  The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (yeah, I don’t have a subscription to that either) states that “Further analysis showed a strong association between major heart anomalies and taking fluoxetine in the first trimester. Women who smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day also had more babies with heart anomalies. Women taking paroxetine or smoking less than ten cigarettes a day also faced elevated risks, but not to the same extent."

Smoking, yeah that’s just dumb. But this report is a big bummer for those pill poppin’ mums-to-be out there. With all the hormonal changes that come with pregnancy, women who depend on a daily mood stabiliser could be really hard hit by the emotional changes that can occur with pregnancy without the aid of their medicines. A professor stated about these results that “It’s estimated that as many as one in seven women suffer from clinical
depression during pregnancy and clinicians need to weigh up the
individual risks of pregnant women taking, or not taking, drugs like
fluoxetine”.  At least it only lasts nine months, right?