Risk of cardiovascular malformations after exposure to paroxetine in pregnancy: meta-analysis

Abstract

Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), King’s Fund, DH-Data, CINAHL, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) and British Nursing Index (BNI). Combinations of the terms ‘SSRI’, ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor(s)’, ‘SRI’, ‘serotonin reuptake inhibitors’, ‘paroxetine’, ‘pregnancy’, ‘congenital malformation(s)’, ‘congenital defect(s)’, ‘cardiovascular malformation(s)’, ‘cardiac defect(s)’, ‘cardiovascular defect(s)’, ‘fetal malformation(s)’ and ‘fetal anomalies’ were used for the search. The search was restricted to articles published in English but there was no exclusion on the basis of country, ethical approval, etc. No grey literature was searched for this review. Each abstract/title and article was scrutinised by two of the authors (N.P. and R.P.) and the differences between them were resolved by consensus. Relevant articles were hand-searched for cross-references. The GlaxoSmithKline website was searched for recent data on paroxetine. To exclude repetitive data-sets, only the study with the most updated data was taken up for analysis. A repeat data search was done in August 2012, after the first review of this article, and results were updated.