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Debate continues as to whether infants of women taking antidepressants have worse birth outcomes and, if so, whether the risks are due to the medication or to the psychiatric condition. To learn more, researchers compared birth outcomes in infants whose mothers had an ICD-9 depressive diagnosis and filled a prescription for an SSRI (most commonly, paroxetine, fluoxetine, and sertraline) but not for any other psychotropic medication; infants whose depressed mothers did not receive antidepressants; and infants whose mothers had no depression diagnoses and took no psychotropic medications.
The data came from registries of births and prescriptions and hospital and outpatient records concerning 119,547 live births that took place from 1998 to 200…