Most of the clinical and non-clinical literature revealed an association between maternal use of classical/first-generation antidepressants such as tri/tetra-cyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and monoamine oxidase inhibitors and impaired neurodevelopment in children along with adverse pregnancy outcomes. Although several second-generation antidepressant drugs (ADs) of various classes have been introduced recently, their potential to affect neurodevelopment and neurobehavioral development in newborns has not been investigated. This systematic review intends to provide an overview of the findings of neurodevelopmental and neurobehavioral effects following prenatal exposure to second-generation antidepressants, taking into account pharmaceutical company-conducted clinical trials, case reports, non-clinical studies, and academic publications that have been published to date. With the accompanying keywords of pregnancy, neurodevelopment, neurobehavior, and ADs, a systematic evaluation of published research on neurodevelopmental/neurobehavioral outcomes including cognition, speech, emotion, and motor coordination in early life was undertaken between January 1980 and April 2022. We searched Pub Med, Clinicaltrails.gov, Cochrane Library and Web of Science for potentially relevant articles published in English and included 32 articles in this review. On analyzing 32 articles pertaining to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) and atypical ADs use during pregnancy, its clinical and non-clinical implications showed no difference in neurodevelopmental outcomes between those exposed and controls, despite some reports of abnormalities in motor, cognitive, speech, emotion, and social behavior, as well as neurodevelopmental and neurobehavioral outcomes. However, scholarly articles on neurodevelopmental/ neurobehavioral studies are still limited to drawing an appropriate conclusion. Therefore, there is an urgent need to study the long-term impact of SSRIs, SNRIs, and atypical ADs use in pregnancy on the betterment of both mother and fetus, respectively.
Key words: Animal studies, Antidepressant drugs, Clinical studies, Motoric behaviour, Neurobehaviour, Neurodevelopment, Pregnancy, Systematic review
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