Lexapro Birth Defects More Frequent Than Early Estimates
The antidepressant drug Lexapro has been linked to a number of birth defects. Lexapro is manufactured by Forest Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical company that paid over $300 million in fines to the Department of Justice. Initially, the reported Lexapro birth defects focused primarily on cardiac birth defects but other birth defects attributed to Lexapro include club foot, Spina bifida, anencephaly, craniosynostosis and omphalocele birth defects. These are serious birth defects that all too often result in death shortly after birth, and when that isn’t the case, a lifetime of medical care is required. In the last year there have been hundreds of Lexapro birth defects lawsuits filed, but most troubling is the fact that there may be thousands of other Lexapro birth defects cases out there that either haven’t been reported or are not yet attributed to Lexapro. Most Lexapro birth defects are believed to occur when the mother took the antidepressant during the first trimester of pregnancy. Statistics on antidepressant use among American women is amazing; a recent news report estimated that 24% of all women between the ages of 24 and 40 are using an antidepressant to control severe depression or anxiety. And antidepressants such as Lexapro are often used to treat a whole host of other issues for which they haven’t been approved by the FDA, such as quitting smoking and sexual dysfunction.’ With such pervasive use of multiple classes of antidepressants among women in prime child-bearing years, the number of births per thousand where a serious birth defect is present is likely to rise.’ Neither Lexapro nor any of the other antidepressants linked to birth defects has been pulled from the market, and most are still being prescribed to pregnant women today.’ There has been little clinical testing of antidepressant use by women that are pregnant, leaving Lexapro birth defect lawsuit filings as one of the clearest measures of just how widespread this problem has become. As more families struggle to deal with the tragedy of birth defects from drugs such as Lexapro, the total number of lawsuits will grow, but the heartache won’t diminish.
