Hm. It seems a small effect if it is there. As mentioned, women with mental illness have higher rates of having children with autism, so it's tough to tease out cause and effect. Even so, unless it is critical, it's common sense to steer clear of all mind-altering drugs while pregnant.
The question is, how do the Amish feel about zoloft?
My guess is that there is an environmental component to the increase in autism, but I doubt that we have found it yet. That's a devious way of stating the facts. When you read down below that 70-85% of Amish kids are vaccinated, it strongly suggests that it is not the vaccine, but very well may be something else.The term Amish anomaly was coined by Dan Olmsted, who asserted that he could only find three Amish autistics after searching in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and that two of them were vaccinated.
Yeah, as I recall both sides of the vaccine debate (which, really, is almost over even in the hotbeds - I was there to watch it die) used the Amish as fuel. I guess my point was that if we can prenatal SSRIs to autism, we need to find a community that eschews SSRIs.
Add to that the fact that the increase in autism diagnosis has been steep enough that if there were one thing (SSRIs, for example, or anything else), it would be the easiest thing for any decent statistician to pick out. The fact that it's taken this many years to even suggest this possibility means that if there's an effect, it's almost undoubtedly weak. It took, what, one or two days of good study for the academic community at large to reject the vaccine hypothesis? Sadly, once the meme is released, it multiplies on its own. Hopefully antidepressants don't suffer the same fate, as they help a lot of people, especially at times of great hormonal flux such as baby time. Know what else is really bad for kids? Maternal depression.
SBM did a decent commentary on this: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/antidepressants-and-autism/ My comments to a friend: It is still only observational. Nothing's to say that the underlying link isn't the mother's depression itself or another factor inducing that depression.I imagine 1-2% risk is a pretty scary number to a mother worried about being the one unlucky person in fifty, but I liked how that post put it in context. It's still a surprising link and if I were the one having a kid, this might make me want to hold off until my treatment was complete.
As always, it would be great if people didn't overreact, because a causal link hasn't been established by a country mile. As far as I know, they didn't control for level of depression, for example. That is, people who are very depressed as far more likely to not want to quit taking medication than those who are mildly depressed. Also, all they had were prescriptions, not self-reporting of taking medicine. Anyone who has dealt with people on mental illness pills, knows that there's a lot of people who don't taken them, even when prescribed. It's an interesting study, but I'm bothered by all the physicians who say, "don't over interpret", but then go on to do said same in the very next sentence.
This is true. I guess I sort of did that, though I'd still stand by sticking on the drug if you already have the child and (all else being equal) considering holding off on a new child from the category C classification.but I'm bothered by all the physicians who say, "don't over interpret", but then go on to do said same in the very next sentence.