JAMA's landmark antidepressant study still doesn’t tell the whole story
Twenty years ago, a landmark JAMA study changed the way antidepressants were prescribed during pregnancy. Today, readers still aren't seeing the complete scientific record.
Twenty years ago, a paper published in JAMA changed the way doctors thought about antidepressant use during pregnancy.
The study concluded that women who discontinued the medication during pregnancy were five times more likely to relapse into major depression than those who remained on the medication. It quickly became one of the most influential papers in perinatal psychiatry.
Its findings were incorporated into clinical guidelines, cited by regulators, and eventually referenced in FDA prescribing information.
For many clinicians, it became the definitive evidence that discontinuing SSRIs during pregnancy carried a substantial risk of depressive relapse.
At the time, maternal-foetal medicine specialist Dr Adam Urato noticed something was missing from the study’s disclosures.
He recognised that many of the authors’ financial relationships with manufacturers of antidepressants had not been disclosed.