Oh, great. Adding more fodder to the eternal question "Should I focus on getting pregnant or would I be better off just trying to avoid a big depressive slump?" is the recently published study by
New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Fertility & Sterility.
That's a very real question for a lot of anxious people. I mean, having a tough time getting pregnant produces its own brand of misery. Just think of the double-whammy for folks who are already trying to treat depression, TTC aside.
A few years back, the FDA told women about the increased birth defects risk from taking the SSRI paroxetine (that's Paxil, to you and me) during pregnancy. There've been other worrisome reports that cause women with depression to slide off their meds for the sake of conception. The new report is a first to link paroxetine to male infertility at a genetic level.
We already knew that guys on Paxil have a hard time -- well, staying that way, anyway -- which can make baby-making a truly aggravating experience. But now we're learning that even when you work around that detail (and this study did indeed have confirming evidence of the Paxil-ED connection,) paroxetine makes something else happen: it slows sperm down to the point that they sort of corrode, DNA-wise.
The relatively small study (35 subjects) had otherwise big numbers: DNA fragmentation went from less than 10 percent to 50 percent while taking the drug. More than a third experienced significant erectile function changes and almost half had ejaculatory difficulty.
The good news: both sexual function and DNA fragmentation return after one month of laying off the paroxetine.



