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).

Overexpression of TRIM28/SETDB1 and several HERVs in children with ASD and the positive correlations between their transcriptional levels suggest that these may be main players in pathogenetic mechanisms leading to ASD.

From another paper.

The present data support the involvement of HERVs in ASD and suggest HERVs and cytokines as ASD-associated traits. Since ASD is a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental disorders, a single determinant alone could be not enough to account for the complexity, and HERV/cytokines expression could be considered in a set of biomarkers, easily detectable in blood, and potentially useful for an early diagnosis.

Source

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.

Random picture, not me, 2019, Australia. It is however how I feel lately