Popular antidepressant drugs may cause damage to the DNA in spermwhich could lead to loss of fertility in some men!
Findings published in New Scientist magazine said researchers at Cornell Medical Center in New York studied 35 healthy men given paroxetine. The drug is sold as Paxil® or Seroxat® by GlaxoSmithKline.
Lead researchers Peter Schlegel, M.D., and Cigdem Tanrikut, M.D., found the proportion of sperm cells with damaged DNA rose from about 13 percent before treatment to a little more than 30 percent after just four weeks!
The new findings add to concerns raised by Schlegel and Tanrikut in 2006. Their previous research found two men developed low counts of healthy sperm following treatment with two different selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). This is the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant drugs.
According to an article from the September 24, 2008, edition of New Scientist, Douglas Carrell, a specialist in male infertility at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said specialists consider a fraction of 30 percent of sperm with DNA damage as being clinically significant.
Similar levels of DNA damage in sperm have been tied to problems with embryo viability in couples trying to have children.
I think a lot of us around the world have had data that have pointed in this direction and have been suspicious, Carrell said, and added that this research is a good preliminary study. He said studies of the long-term effects of SSRIs on sperm are also necessary.