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Managing pregnant or breast-feeding patients who use psychotropic medications is a major clinical challenge because antipsychotics have negative effects on neonatal motor performance and, possibly, on prenatal neurological development, as found in animal studies. To assess whether neuromotor neonatal effects persist at age 6 months, researchers examined 22 infants of mothers who received antipsychotics during pregnancy, 85 infants of mothers on antidepressants, and 202 infants of those not taking psychotropics. Polypharmacy was common.
On standardized tests of muscle tone, reflexes, and motor skills, infants in the antipsychotic group had significantly worse scores than those in the comparison groups. Exposure to antipsychotics via breast-fe…