I am amazed by the number of already published studies that openly admit that SSRI drugs have a well-known and wide range of organ-specific toxicities, especially when prescribed to pregnant women. Yet, despite this abundance of evidence, psychiatry still continues to claim that the “benefits” of those drugs outweigh the risks, even in the face to skyrocketing rates of childhood disease thought to begin in-utero, including autism, cardiac defects, muscular dystrophies, bone deformities, neurological conditions, etc. Be that as it may, the study below suggests a common mechanism behind the wide range of SSRI toxicities, and apparently it (again!) comes down to metabolism. Serotonin (5-HT) is one of the master (negative) regulators of oxidative phosphorylation, so it is quite logical to observe the negative metabolic effects on the heart that the study discovered. Now, if SSRI/serotonin can have such profound negative effects on the heart – an organ that is quite resilient to damage due to the high concentrations of protective steroids (e.g. testosterone, DHT and pregnenolone, etc) in it – imagine what SSRI/serotonin can do to the organ that is the most sensitive to energetic disturbances – the brain.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08168-8
“…The administration of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy can increase the odds of congenital heart defects in babies. The present study aims to explore the toxic effects of SSRIs on the cardiac systems and the underlying mechanism. We apply human pluripotent stem cells to establish 2D-monolayer cardiomyocyte and 3D-cardiac organoid models to evaluate the effects of three SSRIs (fluoxetine, paroxetine, and sertraline) on cardiac development. We observe that SSRIs exposure inhibited ATP production and mitochondrial respiration and disrupted mitochondrial homeostasis and sarcomere structure in the differentiating cardiomyocytes, presenting high risks of dysfunction and abnormality of cardiomyocytes. Further analyses in the cardiac organoid model show that SSRIs not only reduce mitochondrial respiration and ATP production, but may also affect cardiac development and angiogenesis. Altogether, our study reveals that SSRIs induce mitochondrial dysfunction and sarcomeric disorganization in cardiomyocytes, implying their potential risk to the cardiac system.”
