MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Magdalena Janecka PhD Department of Psychiatry Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Our paper explored the association between maternal use of medication during pregnancy and the rates of autism in a large cohort from Israel. This followed on from a number of earlier studies reporting that the use of certain medications - for example antidepressants - during pregnancy is associated with higher rates of autism in children. However, rather than test the effects of any particular drug, or a set of drugs aggregated based on maternal condition, our large dataset allowed us to group all medications prescribed to pregnant women based on their drug target, and in the subsequent analyses focus on over 50 groups that included drugs with neurotransmitter-relevant targets - for example agonists and antagonists of their receptors. (more…)