Women who take strategic serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants during pregnancy are twice as likely to give birth prematurely as women who do not take the drugs, according to a study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine and funded by the Danish Medical Research Council.

Antidepressant treatments usually seem to need three to four weeks to become effective. Therefore, the finding of treatments with a swifter onset could be a chief objective of biological psychiatry. The first drug discovered to generate quick in mood appears to be the NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist, ketamine.

Scientists from the National Institutes of Health account that another medication, scopolamine, also seems to generate replicable fast enhancement in mood. Scopolamine may momentarily obstruct the muscarinic cholinergic receptor, believed to be overactive in people with depression.

The antidepressant bupropion may hold promise for improving symptoms in younger women diagnosed with so-called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, a study suggests. The disorder, called HSDD for short, is diagnosed when a person has a persistently low interest in sex, and that disinterest is causing personal distress or relationship problems.

Congress is worried that antidepressant drugs may be causing more suicides among members of the military than they prevent. But a University of Utah dean told lawmakers Wednesday that the benefits of such drugs far outweigh their risks.

M. David Rudd, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Science at the U., also said the real danger is that some depressed soldiers and veterans are less willing to seek treatment because they or their families have heard that drugs may increase risk of suicide.

When pregnant women take antidepressants, it sometimes causes their babies to hit developmental milestones late, Danish researchers.

However, the delays–up to one month–still place the toddlers within the normal range of development.

“These drugs have an effect on the fetus’ brain,” said Dr. Lars Henning Pedersen, who worked on the study. But, he said, the delays “may not matter for the child at all.” Pedersen, from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, spoke to Reuters Health in a telephone interview.