What Accounts for the Reported Association Between Prenatal Antidepressant Exposure and Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Evidence linking in utero antidepressant exposure to subsequent adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes remains inconsistent. For example, a meta-analysis of 6 case-control studies including 117,737 patients reported a significant association between prenatal exposure to an antidepressant medication and childhood autism spectrum disorder (ASD; odds ratio, 1.81; 95% confidence interval, 1.49–2.20). However, a meta-analysis of 2 cohort studies involving 772,331 patients reported no significant association between prenatal exposure to antidepressant medication and childhood ASD (hazard ratio, 1.26; 95% CI, 0.91–1.74).

To further explore this issue, Swedish investigators studied 1,580,629 children born to 943,776 mothers. A total of 22,544 children …