Paxil Birth Defects: Yet Another Lawsuit Filed

Philadelphia, PAIt seems as though GlaxoSmithKline faces an unending stream of people willing to file lawsuits alleging Paxil causes birth defects. Despite the company's insistence that discontinuing Paxil while pregnant is more dangerous than taking it, women whose babies were born with serious birth defects claim that Paxil's side effects are far more dangerous than not taking the drug.

A lawsuit recently filed in Philadelphia on behalf of an infant, known as "JB" alleges that the baby's birth defects were caused by exposure to Paxil while in the womb. Although the pregnancy was uneventful, after birth JB experienced some difficulties and was referred to a pediatric cardiologist, who determined that JB had cardiac deformities. Those deformities include aortic stenosis, mitral stenosis and coarctation of the atortic valve.

JB has already undergone one heart operation—a balloon valvuloplasty—and will likely have many more as he grows. JB's mother was prescribed Paxil during her first trimester.

Many other mothers have experienced the pain of a child born with birth defects. "I took Paxil for a little over a year after the birth of my first child," says Sarah H. (not her real name). "I was not pregnant at the time. My second child, born 2 years after that, was born with a severe heart defect…She had heart surgery in 2005 to correct the problem and it has been a long, slow road to recovery, but we are grateful every moment of every day that we still have her.

"My concern is whether this drug lingers in the body and how much we truly know about this drug. This was financially devastating to our family to have the surgeries, not to mention the stress and hardship on our daughter. No parent or child should ever have to go through this and I think further investigation to prevent this needs to be done."

Heather P. (not her real name) says, "I was told that it was okay for me to be on Paxil while pregnant and I found out later that my son was born with a heart defect. [He was born with] 2 heart valves instead of 3."

Many women say they were told that Paxil was safe to take while pregnant: however, they do not blame their doctors for telling them this. The women say that their doctors really did believe Paxil was safe because of the warning information that came with the drug. Rather, they say the fault lies with GlaxoSmithKline for not adequately warning doctors about the risks to their newborn babies.

Those risks are serious, including cardiac birth defects, pulmonary birth defects, brain and spinal cord defects and skull defects to name a few. Not all babies born with those defects have survived. Others have, but face a lifetime of surgeries as they grow and develop. One thing that they all have in common: their mothers are heartbroken that a drug they took, believing it was safe, could have caused their babies so much pain.

Now, those women are fighting to make sure that others do not go through what they went through, by filing lawsuits against GlaxoSmithKline and other SSRI drug makers.