Antidepressants and other anti-psychotic drugs in the water supply could be a cause of autism in children, scientists suspect. Tiny traces of the drugs are in our drinking water, which might interfere with the developing fetus, and especially the genes associated with early brain development.
Scientists from Idaho State University have established that the drugs are triggering the genes in fish they tested, and they surmise the same could be happening in humans.
Pharmaceuticals are in the water system, including the water we drink, because filtration plants are unable to process them out. They get into the public water supply through human waste – the body is able to break down only around 20 per cent of any drug – and because people throw the drugs down the toilet.
The research team mixed together the anti-epileptic drug carbamazepine with two SSRI antidepressants, fluoxetine and venlafaxine, at very low concentrations, and added them to the water in which fathead minnow fish were swimming.
After 18 days’ exposure, the 324 genes specifically associated with autism had been altered – and yet other genes were unaffected.
The researchers’ suspicions that the same could be happening in humans has been strengthened by earlier studies that discovered pregnant women taking an SSRI are more likely to give birth to an autistic child.
(Source: PLoS One, 2012; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032917).
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