Prenatal Antidepressant Exposure changes the child's brain for years
There are more to this than "meets the eye"
As I often state, sometimes certain new information or scientific findings take precedence over my schedule, and this is one of those times. Also for honesty's sake, and to be forefront, for years now I have been trying to be critical of the information, to follow the evidence, even if the way I arrive at the end result is unorthodox, doing my own complexity-framed meta-analysis, among other forms of analysis, and minimizing my biases.
This is not one of those times. Ever since I got into Medicine, I have been vehemently vocal against the abuse of SSRI’s prescription. Regardless of how I “cut it”, biases will show in this subject. I firmly believe SSRIs do a lot more harm than good, especially long-term usage, and the evidence backs me up on this. My former military life, years of medical observation, and a lot of scientific research led me to this bias, with the first being the one contributing disproportionally leading me to the second and third.
I know some of my readers make use of SSRI, and if it works for you, that is okay and great, but make sure to drive this point forward to your healthcare provider. One of the first lessons I had from a conversation with my biochemistry teachers was “Many times SSRIs are ineffective not because of our lack of understanding of its kinetics and chemistry, but improper levels of ferritin.”
Without proper Iron levels and especially Ferritin, your body and brain will only get the “bad” side-effects of SSRIs without any of the good. So always make sure you have proper Ferritin levels so SSRIs can work properly.
Prenatal Antidepressant Exposure and Offspring Brain Morphologic Trajectory
The publication and the conclusion speak for itself. Prenatal use of SSRIs directly affects the brains of the children exposed to the usage. First, why is this a problem ? SSRIs are first-line recommendations to mothers facing depressive symptoms, and the treatment is often not that effective, yet heavily prescribed. Second, and significant to our current problem, SARS-CoV-2 infection can significantly impact infants during gestation, but the Covid-19 vaccines do so even more.
One could argue the brain is the body’s most resilient organ, the last one to give up, and neuroplasticity can work, quite literally, miracles, but this doesn’t imply a good quality of life. Changes in cerebral gray matter will affect a child’s cognitive and behavioral development. Changes in the amygdala will influence emotional regulation, anxiety, and mood disorders. Fusiform gyrus changes could potentially affect the ability to recognize faces or interpret facial expressions, which can lead to severe deficits in socialization, and the list could go on, as the brain is incredibly complex.
If reading the paragraph above you thought this sounded like Autism Spectrum Disorder, it would be because ASD shares a lot of these “deficits” too. In fact, a recent study done in rodents demonstrated prenatal exposure to SSRI doubled the rates of Autism by increasing oxidative stress burden and neurochemical changes. A 2011 paper cited by the same study found a similar pattern, prenatal usage equals higher chances of developing ASD, this time in humans. The 2023 paper abstract.
SRI (fluoxetine) induced significant neurochemical abnormalities in the rat brain by increasing lipid peroxide (MDA), Interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), and caspase-3 levels and by depleting Glutathione (GSH), Glutathione S-transferases (GST), Catalase, potassium (K+), and Creatine kinase (CK) levels, similarly to what has been discovered in the PPA model of autism when compared with control. Prenatal fluoxetine exposure plays a significant role in asset brain damage in newborns; further investigation of fluoxetine as an autism risk factor is thus warranted.
Readers who are notetakers or possess good memory will remember the abundance of some of these are also found in SARS-CoV-2 infection (and especially post-infection in some), and will sound fairly similar to the inflammatory pathway elicited by the vaccines. Adding jet fuel to a gasoline fire. Of course, I have recently written about HERVs and their impact on human health (and the Spike waking them up).
From another paper.
And if you really want to scratch your head, just use your preferred search engine and the terms “ASD Herpesviruses”. A healthy gut, proper control of your inflammation, a good, minimal stress lifestyle, and you are “safe” as safe one can be, as an FYI. Read my HERVs article to understand both what I am implying and what this means.
There is another paper I will cover on the subject of children and immune systems, but that falls in line with my Inflammaging articles rather than this one.
If you wanted to know more about me and why I have such a focus on "brain stuff", this is my "list of injuries" in recent years.
TBI, followed by severe depression and levels of PTSD from military service (too many booms near you ain't healthy bro)
Dirt knife to my gut, also in the military, almost died, wrecked my microbiome for life
Dozens of minor stuff
An severe autoimmune reaction in my Central Nervous System, before Covid
Brain injury from Covid which I hid for quite a long time
You can come back from almost everything, that is why I am sharing this. As the great David Goggins said.
"I am not gifted. I am not special. I am just driven".
Well let me report a conversation from yesterday with one of the top perinatologists in the nation here. (Relevant because some of the same receptors are targeted as discussed in this post.)
Me: "The medication given during birth (peridurals, epidurals, spinal anesthesia, etc.) alters developing brain cells."
Top perinatologist: "None of that medication enters the baby when given via peridural / epidural."
Me: "Not according to the national guidelines on perinatal medication, which describe clinical effects in babies following maternal medication."
Him: "I know the people who wrote those guidelines."
Great. Would be nice if you also knew the facts about the medication that nearly every newborn is receiving. For the audience: keep in mind that a therapeutic dose of these substances, enough to cause symptoms, is many thousands of times stronger than the concentration needed to permanently alter cell identity and epigenetics. So "no observable clinical symptoms" has absolutely no weight when considering the safety of your child's future brain.
He also "explained" to me that ultrasound would have no impact on the fetal brain because they were using it to look at the heartbeat, not the brain. Glad we cleared that one up for dolphins, that these waves don't actually travel through water. It's a bit like aerosols not travelling from one set of taped arrows on the grocery store floor to the other parallel set because we don't want them to. I suppose this explains all of those ultrasound pictures with mysteriously headless babies and phantom hearts floating in a void: the waves are exclusively reaching their target of inquiry.