SSRIs in Pregnancy —What Offspring Brain Volumes Can and Cannot Tell Us

To the Editor We read with great interest the publication of Koc and colleagues on prenatal exposure to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and offspring brain trajectories. We applaud the authors for their innovative and well-executed study using data from a prospective population-based cohort, adjusting for confounders, including different comparator groups, and applying advanced neuroimaging techniques and statistical modeling. The authors showed that prenatal SSRI exposure was associated with about 3% reduced brain volumes of regions involved in emotional regulation in offspring. They also demonstrated minor reduced volumes of specific brain regions among offspring of women with depressive symptoms in the prenatal and postnatal life.
Source: JAMA Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research