Sunday, November 13, 2011

Antidepressant-Autism Link Considered

Autism is on the rise, and no one has pinned down reasons, but researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center may have helped discover a cause: anti-depressants taken during pregnancy.
Their study, conducted with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, exposed rat pups to the drugs.
Published online last month by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org), the findings showed that when developing rats were given the antidepressants, their behavior mimicked that of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, including difficulty in communicating and relating to others.

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