Prozac may stunt bone growth in children, new research suggests

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A new study published in the journal Endocrinology reveals that giving Prozac to children may result in a loss of bone mass. The study was conducted on mice and showed an average 9.4% less bone formation in the thighbones of the mice taking Prozac, compared to mice who were not given the drug. With the popularity of antidepressant drugs continuing to climb, and with Prozac now the only antidepressant still being widely prescribed to children in the United States, this finding is of special significance.

Elsewhere around the world, the use of antidepressant drugs in children has been banned. This is largely because overwhelming evidence has surfaced in the last several years pointing to an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and violent behavior in children given SSRI drugs -- a class of drugs to which Prozac and other antidepressants belongs. Now this study brings to light new safety questions: could the drugs be causing bone disorders?

The manufacturer of Prozac, Eli Lilly & Co., continues to stress that Prozac has been proven quite safe, even in use with children. It has been the FDA approved, after all, and we all know how stringent the FDA drug safety program is.

My own take is that we are dosing up our children with far too many psychoactive drugs. Our children don't need Ritalin, they don't need Prozac, and they don't need to be given labels of fictitious diseases such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Social Anxiety Disorder. What they need is physical activity -- more recess time, more time under natural sunlight so they can generate their own vitamin D and prevent depression and other mental disorders on their own.

They need better diets, starting with the banning of soft drinks in all public schools and the banning of all advertising and marketing of junk foods and fast foods to children. Because it is these foods, drinks, and junk products that create physiological disorders that ultimately get diagnosed as clinical depression or ADHD. If we could get our nation's schoolchildren on a program of solid nutrition, we wouldn't need these drugs in the first place, and we wouldn't have to talk about the potentially dangerous side effects like loss of bone mass, violent behavior, and childhood suicides.

And I continue to stress the fact -- which I still haven't seen mentioned in the mainstream press even once -- that the two boys in the Columbine school massacre were both on antidepressant drugs at the time they opened fire on their classmates. Nobody seems to be looking at this fact, or tempting to correlate these violent outbreaks with the use of antidepressant drugs. And yet the pattern is there to see for anyone willing to take a closer look at the evidence.

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