Notícia

List23 (EUA)

Is there a risk or a relief? Scientists Demand More Research on Antidepressants and Pregnancy (28 notícias)

Publicado em 19 de janeiro de 2023

Antidepressants are a form of medicine used to treat mood disorders, anxiety, and other mental health problems.

Depression affects a large portion of pregnant women in the world, with estimates ranging from 10% to 16%. While most women can improve with the help of antidepressants, the effects of these medications on fetal brain development are still unknown.

Brazilian researchers have compared over 100 scientific papers on the topic and have determined that advanced methods such as genomics should be used to investigate the effect of antidepressants, especially sertraline, the most commonly prescribed antidepressant worldwide. Although the safety of using these medications during pregnancy is supported by scientific evidence, further research is required to fully understand their effects on fetal neurodevelopment.

"Most of the papers we examined were observations and studies conducted in the laboratory using cell cultures and animals, who have brain development that is different from that of humans. They don't provide enough evidence to support definitive conclusions," said researcher Alexandre Kihara of the Federal University of the ABC in So Bernardo do Campo, Brazil.

Luciana Rafagnin Marinho, a researcher at UFABC with doctoral and postdoctoral degrees in epigenetics, in vitro embryo production and animal reproduction, has proposed an experimental experiment involving human-induced pluripotent stem cells [hiPSC] to examine what happens to develop fetal nerve cells in pregnant women during treatment with antidepressants.

Marinho and Kihara are the first and last authors of a review paper recently published in the journal Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology. The study was supported by FAPESP.

Pluripotential stem cells from humans can be classified into brain organoids ("mini-brains"), which scientists want to use in research on neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, as well as in the development of medications with neurological effectiveness.

Alysson Muotri, the penultimate author of the book, is a neuroscientist at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in the United States. He is a co-founder of Tismoo, a Brazilian biotech startup.

"We can study organoids for up to a year, observing aspects of their development, such as the morphology and electrophysiology of individual neurons or neural networks," said the scientist.

Marinho cited the only study that used brain organoids among the more than 100 that were covered by the review. Neurites [projections from neurons that develop into axons and dendrites to form complex circuits] and the population of oligodendrocytes, which are therefore essential to help information travel through the nervous system, are mentioned.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome analysis, and single-cell RNA sequencing are applicable to organoids research. This is of particular importance because changes may not be restricted to neurons.

"We're not saying antidepressants shouldn't be used in pregnancy." Kihara said of the need to investigate their effects on neurodevelopment with the most advanced resources available.

Luciana Simes Rafagnin Marinho, Gabrielly Maria Denadai Chiarantin, Débora Sterzeck Cardoso, Théo Henrique de Lima-Vasconcellos, Guilherme Shigueto Vilar Higa, Mariana Sacrini Ayres Ferraz, Roberto De Pasquale, Silvia Honda Takada, Fabio Papes, And Alexandre Hiroaki Kihara, 15