Link Between Antidepressants and Birth Defect

The scientists, Lars Henning Pedersen and colleagues, from Aarhus University in Denmark, aimed to identify any relationship between taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy and birth defects.

SSRIs are the drugs most often prescribed for women suffering from depression, and in the U.S. around 13% of pregnant women take these common antidepressant drugs, and there has been a concern for some time that the drugs might affect the developing fetus.

The research, published last week in the medical journal BMJ, was a population cohort study of 493,113 children born in Denmark between 1996 and 2003. It looked at the incidence of birth defects, including heart abnormalities, and prescription SSRIs taken by the women in the first trimester.

The study found the risks of taking SSRIs were generally low, and no association was found with birth defects except that the rate of septal heart defects was slightly elevated. Septal heart defects are abnormalities in the wall dividing the left and right ventricles in the heart.

The incidence of septal heart defects was 0.5% (2315 of 493,113) in unexposed babies, 0.9% (12 of 1370) in babies of mothers who took one SSRI, and 2.1% (4 of 193) in babies of mothers who took more than one type of SSRI. Sertraline (Zoloft) and citalopram (Celexa) were associated with a slightly higher incidence than fluoxetine (Prozac) and paroxetine (Paxil, Pexeva).

Research in the U.S. in 2005 found that Paxil taken during pregnancy was associated with a slightly greater risk or heart defects in the fetus, but later studies, including the Danish study, have not confirmed this.

Dr Pedersen said more research is needed to decide if any particular SSRI is safer than another, since the various studies have implicated different drugs. As Professor Chambers of the University of California in San Diego writes in an editorial accompanying the research paper, the risk of taking the antidepressants is extremely low and must be counterbalanced by the very real risks of leaving serious depression undertreated. Link...

Miami Dolphins, NFL go pink for breast cancer awareness

By DAVID J. NEAL

dneal@MiamiHerald.com

Pink doesn't usually fit in the testosterone-drenched world of football. But it will be all over Land Shark Stadium on Sunday, like it will be all over the NFL as the Dolphins and the league support Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Players will have pink cleats, wristbands, gloves, sideline caps, helmet decals, captains' patches or towels. Coaches will wear pink caps and pink ribbon pins. Goal posts will be wrapped in pink padding. The balls used by kickers will have pink ribbon decals.

``I know people think of [the NFL] as male-driven,'' said Jeanette Sparano, wife of Dolphins coach Tony Sparano. ``Obviously, all the players are men, all the coaches. But they all have a mom, a grandmom and an aunt, maybe a sister, a wife, a daughter. So it affects them as much as it affects all of us.''

Jeanette Sparano, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, and several players' wives will be handing out pink ribbons at stadium entrances. In the Ocean Drive Club, Kara Ross, wife of owner Stephen Ross, will host a special pregame reception with Jennifer Lopez that will feature an Ocean Drive Magazine pink fashion show and an auction with several pink items. Auction proceeds will go toward the Miami Dolphins Foundation's support for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The Dolphins, with the support of the Boar's Head food company, also will be offering their $80 upper sideline seats for $52 for the three October home games and donating $10 for every such ticket sold to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The cause isn't a distant one for the Dolphins. Roberta DeLeone, wife of tight ends coach George DeLeone, died last spring at 57 from breast cancer. Jeannette Sparano has a sister and aunt who are breast cancer survivors. Dolphins CEO Michael Dee said his mother and mother-in-law are breast cancer survivors. Link...

High-sugar diet increases men's blood pressure

A HIGH-fructose diet raises blood pressure in men, while a drug used to treat gout seems to protect against the blood pressure increase, according to research reported at the American Heart Association’s 63rd High Blood Pressure Research Conference.
“This is the first evidence of a role of fructose in raising blood pressure and a role for lowering uric acid to protect against that blood pressure increase in people,” said Richard Johnson, M.D., co-author of the study and professor and head of the division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado-Denver medical campus in Aurora, Colo.
In the study, excessive fructose consumption seemed to increase new onset of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors associated with the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. On the other hand, the gout drug seemed to halt it - most likely by lowering uric acid, which affects blood pressure.
Fructose, one of several dietary sugars, makes up about half of all the sugar molecules in table sugar and in high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener often used in packaged products because it’s relatively cheap and has a long shelf life. Glucose makes up the other half. Fructose is the only common sugar known to increase uric acid levels.
Patients with high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney disease often have high uric acid levels and gout. But all the ways in which those conditions might contribute to the development or worsening of the others isn’t completely understood, Johnson said.
Johnson and co-author Santos Perez-Pozo, M.D., a nephrologist at Mateo Orfila Hospital in Minorca, Spain who led the study, evaluated 74 adult men, average age 51, who consumed a diet that included 200 grams (g) of fructose per day in addition to their regular diet. The amount is much higher than the estimated U.S. daily intake of 50 g to 70 g of fructose consumed by most U.S. adults. Half of the men were randomly assigned to get the gout drug allopurinol and the other half acted as controls.
After only two weeks on the diet, the high-fructose plus placebo group experienced significant average blood pressure increases of about 6 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) in systolic blood pressure (the pressure when the heart beats) and about a 3 mm Hg rise in diastolic blood pressure (the pressure between heartbeats). They were measured with strap-on monitors that record blood pressure periodically around the clock.
In contrast, men on the high-fructose diet plus allopurinol had significantly lower uric acid levels and virtually no increase in systolic blood pressure (only 1 mm Hg). The blood pressure levels of most of the men returned to normal within two months of the study’s conclusion when the participants returned to their normal dietary intake, Johnson said. Link...