A child may face an increased risk of asthma if the child’s mother experienced depression during her pregnancy or she took an older antidepressant to treat her condition, new research suggests.
However, more than 80% of the women in the study who were prescribed antidepressants were given one of a newer class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). And those medications were not linked to any increased risk for asthma in the child.
But it was a different story when the researchers looked only at older antidepressants, known as tricyclic antidepressants. They were linked to the same level of increased risk for asthma as depression during pregnancy, the researchers said. In the study, roughly 8% of the women took the older medications.
