Depression During Pregnancy Can Double Risk of Preterm Delivery

This suggests getting your neurotransmitters in order before you conceive. Remember, serotonin is just ONE of the dozens of neurotransmitters that affect mood. A healthy and balanced person is not depressed. And you might want to note that many PESTICIDES work on insect's neuroendocrine systems...and it's somehow believed that it won't affect humans who eat, breath, absorb the residues, too. Maybe it's magic!

Lastly, you DO need serotonin to build a sufficient uterine lining--this could possibly one of the pathways that depression affects preterm birth. Low serotonin is often a marker of autoimmune disease. When I had my serotonin tested, the doctor was amazed to find it was near zero. He put me on Lexapro right away...and I stopped after two weeks because it made me feel really, really weird and frankly I will never touch the stuff again.

I DID use some natural herbs and things and was able to boost it up to a low, but normal level by my next blood test. Sounds a lot better than rewiring the brain.

From Newswise, the journalists' only site:
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Newswise — Depressed pregnant women have twice the risk of preterm delivery than pregnant women with no symptoms of depression, according to a new study by the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. The study is published online in the Oxford University Press’s journal Human Reproduction on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

The study found that pregnant women with symptoms of depression have an increased risk of preterm delivery, and that the risk grows with the severity of the depressive symptoms. These findings also provide preliminary evidence that social and reproductive risk factors, obesity, and stressful events may exacerbate the depression-preterm delivery link, according to the researchers.

Because the majority of the women in the study did not use anti-depressants, the study provides a clear look at the link between depression and preterm delivery.

The study -- which is among the first to examine depression and pre-term delivery in a representative and diverse population in the United States -- looked at 791 pregnant Kaiser Permanente members in San Francisco city and county from October 1996 through October 1998.

Researchers interviewed the women around their 10th week of pregnancy and found that 41 percent of the women reported significant or severe depressive symptoms. The women with less severe depressive symptoms had a 60 percent higher risk of preterm delivery -- defined as delivery at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation -- compared with women without significant depressive symptoms, and the women with severe depressive symptoms had more than twice the risk.

“Preterm delivery is the leading cause of infant mortality, and yet we don’t know what causes it. What we do know is that a healthy pregnancy requires a healthy placenta, and that placental function is influenced by hormones, which are in turn influenced by the brain,” said lead author Dr. De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland.

“This study adds to emerging evidence that depression during early pregnancy may interfere with the neuroendocrine pathways and subsequently placental function. The placenta and neuroendocrine functions play an important role in maintaining the health of a pregnancy and determining the onset of labor,” Li explained.