Depression During Pregnancy May Cause Premature Birth

Oct. 24 -- THURSDAY, Oct. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Women who are depressed early in their pregnancy run a higher risk of preterm delivery, the leading cause of infant mortality, a new study suggests.

For the study, researchers interviewed 791 San Francisco-area women near their 10th week of pregnancy. Forty-one percent reported "significant" symptoms of depression, and 22 percent reported "severe" symptoms.

Those women with severe symptoms had almost twice the risk of an early birth, defined as before 37 weeks' gestation. Those with significant symptoms had a 60 percent risk of early birth, the study found.

Women who were likelier to report depressive symptoms tended to be younger than 25, unmarried, less educated, poorer, black, and have a history of preterm delivery.

Discovering a possible cause of preterm birth, about which little is known, makes the findings significant, said study lead author Dr. De-Kun Li, a perinatal epidemiologist and senior research scientist at Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.

Scientists have been researching for the causes of high rates of infant mortality in the United States, Li said, but, "we don't know what is going on. If we can find something as obvious as depression that can be treated during pregnancy, that is very, very significant."

The findings were published online Oct. 23 in the journal Human Reproduction.

Dr. Shari I. Lusskin, director of reproductive psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, said she doesn't think the study establishes a link between depression in early pregnancy and preterm delivery. She said the women in the study weren't clinically diagnosed with depression but had scored high on a screening test.

"We don't know if the depression at 10 weeks is a marker for something that happens later in pregnancy, which is the real culprit," she said.

Li hopes the study's findings will make "ante-natal depression" as widely recognized as postpartum depression has become. Until now, depression during pregnancy has been "under-estimated and under-treated," he said, "not just by women, but also by their doctors."