And older, but not newer, antidepressants in pregnancy showed similar increased odds
MONDAY, March 9, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A child may face an increased risk of asthma if the child’s mother or father experienced depression during the pregnancy or if the mother took an older antidepressant to treat her condition, new research suggests. The study findings were published online March 9 in Pediatrics.
Xiaoqin Liu, M.D., an epidemiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, and colleagues analyzed the medical records of 733,685 Danish children born between 1996 and 2007. Of the children’s mothers, 21,371 either had a diagnosis of depression or received a prescription for antidepressants while pregnant.
Children born to mothers who had depression were 25 percent more likely to develop childhood asthma. Among the 8,895 children whose mothers were prescribed antidepressants during pregnancy, the children of those women who received older antidepressants, mostly tricyclic antidepressants, had a 26 percent increased risk of asthma. The researchers also found that depression in fathers slightly increased children’s risk of asthma, which suggested that some kind of environmental or genetic factors might be involved, Liu told HealthDay.
It’s not clear, however, how a mother’s depression might contribute to a child’s asthma risk. The link might be explained partly by biology, with something happening during pregnancy; by involving environmental or genetic factors; or all three, Liu said. The study authors adjusted their findings to account for mothers’ smoking during pregnancy, but they did not account for fathers’ smoking or other sources of secondhand smoke.
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