# Does Prozac Stunt growth?



## Raptors (Aug 3, 2009)

I'm 16 and I've been on prozac for 3 months and havent grown at all in height. (I had a mini growth-spurt just before and seemed to be halted by prozac)

I'm concerned about the studies I've read that prozac stunts growth/bone development in young people. 

WHat are your thoughts? Did anyone else take prozac in their teens? (did you continue to grow?)


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## arth67 (Aug 6, 2009)

prozac is safe, its been in use all over the world for many years, including by pregnant women


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## meyaj (Sep 5, 2009)

I've never read anything to suggest this. It's well known that ritalin stunts growth though (but even then, not by much.) A lot of people just naturally stop growing taller at 16 years old anyways.

I'd be a lot more worried about its effect on neurologic development in a teenager, to be honest. But prozac has been around for a very long time, and is by far the most studied. I'm pretty sure it's considered to be the best first-line option in teenagers.


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## GSH (Jul 16, 2009)

arth67 said:


> prozac is safe, its been in use all over the world for many years, including by pregnant women


So that makes it safe... It's came out in 87. That's not too long ago to me. They don't know how it works so I would say safety maybe unknown also.

It amazes me that any 16 yr old would need an AD.


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## meyaj (Sep 5, 2009)

GSH said:


> It amazes me that any 16 yr old would need an AD.


Yeah... I think most teenagers have difficulties with their metamorphosis to adulthood, and unless the kid is acutely suicidal, I would never recommend an SSRI. Their brains are still developing and are highly neuroplastic, and we have no idea what kind of effects they will have for teenagers in the long-run.

That being said... if a kid is going to be on an antidepressant, Prozac is without a doubt the best choice at the moment.


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## meyaj (Sep 5, 2009)

Sure... but unless you already have good levels of serotonin (in which case, you shouldn't be on an ssri to begin with), then a normal person's baseline is relatively similar as your brain on an ssri

Don't worry about it man.. you're already 16 and probably wouldn't get that much taller anyways. If you're really concerned, ask the doctor for some HGH to offset the SSRI. His chuckle will just mean that he thinks you've got nothing to worry about either.

BTW, how tall are you?


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## Raptors (Aug 3, 2009)

I'm 5'11 which is actually pretty short in my family.


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## DistinctlyAmbiguous (Aug 23, 2009)

Raptors said:


> I'm 16 and I've been on prozac for 3 months and havent grown at all in height. (I had a mini growth-spurt just before and seemed to be halted by prozac)
> 
> I'm concerned about the studies I've read that prozac stunts growth/bone development in young people.
> 
> WHat are your thoughts? Did anyone else take prozac in their teens? (did you continue to grow?)


I was switching between prozac and zoloft since 14 till about 18 years old, and I never stopped growing. Ended up 6'2"


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## jim_morrison (Aug 17, 2008)

Here's the thread that I was referring too btw, found it.
See; *Growth Hormone Regulation by Melatonin and Serotonin*


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## Raptors (Aug 3, 2009)

jim_morrison said:


> Here's the thread that I was referring too btw, found it.
> See; *Growth Hormone Regulation by Melatonin and Serotonin*


link please?


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## jim_morrison (Aug 17, 2008)

Raptors said:


> link please?


It's in Rocknrolls comment. ^


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## Hadrian (Jul 3, 2010)

*Yes Prozac Does Stunt Bone Growth*

It is rather naive to state that just because a drug has been around for a while that it is safe. I took prozac from age 15-21 and it certainly had negative effects on my health. When I came off it, it left me with an under active thyroid and a lack of minerals in my body which I had to take suppliments for.

I agree that prozac stunts bone growth.... I have always been skinny, but looking back my bones did not grow much, if at all, since the age of 15 when I first started to take prozac. A few years ago I compared my wrists to those of my 2 sisters... One sister's wrists are the same size as mine and the other ones wrists are actually thicker and denser than mine! I am taller than both my sisters. My fathers wrists in comparison to mine are at least twice the diameter of my own! To be honest I thought nothing of it until last year I decided to do a bit of research and found many articles relating to this. I'd also like to hear from anyone else who feel their bodies development has been stunted by this wonder drug, Prozac!!!


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## meyaj (Sep 5, 2009)

Hadrian said:


> It is rather naive to state that just because a drug has been around for a while that it is safe. I took prozac from age 15-21 and it certainly had negative effects on my health. When I came off it, it left me with an under active thyroid and a lack of minerals in my body which I had to take suppliments for.
> 
> I agree that prozac stunts bone growth.... I have always been skinny, but looking back my bones did not grow much, if at all, since the age of 15 when I first started to take prozac. A few years ago I compared my wrists to those of my 2 sisters... One sister's wrists are the same size as mine and the other ones wrists are actually thicker and denser than mine! I am taller than both my sisters. My fathers wrists in comparison to mine are at least twice the diameter of my own! To be honest I thought nothing of it until last year I decided to do a bit of research and found many articles relating to this. I'd also like to hear from anyone else who feel their bodies development has been stunted by this wonder drug, Prozac!!!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_fallacy

This happens a lot with any long-term medication. Especially since it's taken over a long period of time, the chance that people will notice some sort of health problem develop is very high, and many people assume that the chronology somehow implies that the drug is the cause. It doesn't.

There's a reason evidence-based medicine takes a statistical approach rather than just looking at people on an individual basis - it's the only way to accurately establish a link. The fact is, what you're describing simply hasn't been found in people taking Prozac at a higher rate than it would occur in the broader population NOT taking the drug, which would strongly suggest that such occurrences are merely coincidence. Not that I think I can convince you, as your mind already seems made up, but hopefully people reading it will take a more rational approach.

That being said, I still don't think it's the wisest idea for kids to be on antidepressants but this is for very different reasons. As we go through childhood and adolescence, studies suggest that our brain is still forming a baseline, and the use of some medications that work via neurotransmitters has been shown in some instances to contribute to a lower-than-normal baseline, which manifests as a higher propensity for cigarette use or even cocaine abuse in their adult life. This is not particularly the case for SSRIs, but still, the brain should be allowed to develop naturally. Of course, if the mental illness is severe enough, one reaches a point where the potential benefits outweigh the potential costs - so I'm not so much against the use of antidepressants in children as much as I feel that the criteria for prescribing them should be much stricter than with adults.

The reason a drug being around for a long time tends to imply safety is that generally they've been well-studied (and Prozac has been VERY well-studied), and the post-marketing drug safety monitoring has had plenty of time to catch problems in the population at large that might have been too rare for a pre-approval study to catch. It doesn't mean that drugs that have been around for longer are perfectly safe, just that they are much more reliably so.

The only psychiatric drugs (that are prescribed to children, anyways) that have shown evidence of growth retardation are psychostimulants like Ritalin and Adderall. Even then, the effects are so small (especially compared to what you're claiming) that this adverse effect would never have been noticed by looking at an individual, but rather required large statistical studies to demonstrate that the average height of kids on a psychostimulant is just a *teensy bit* (less than an inch) less than the average height of kids that have never taken such a drug. Even then, more recent studies suggest that a) growth catches up by late adolescence or adulthood and b) this stunted growth in childhood/early adolescence is actually linked to differences in individuals with ADHD rather than being caused by the drug used to treat it.

Yet still, the fact that such a SMALL difference in growth was detected would suggest that all sorts of legitimate studies should have no trouble hitting on the much more extreme growth problems you attribute to Prozac, especially since among anti-depressants it is extremely well-studied in children. And yet, no such differences between Prozac users and the population at large have been found to even a much smaller degree. It's easy to blame the drug for any health problems that seem to develop during or shortly after the course of treatment, but such things, whether related or not, are inevitably going to happen to a lot of people with a drug that is not just used for a long period of time, but also used by a LARGE amount of people. And it many cases, simply blaming the drug despite a lack of scientific evidence is a pretty damn reckless thing to do, as it will almost always be actually caused by something else which could possibly be very dangerous if so ignored.


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## UltraShy (Nov 8, 2003)

I have no idea if Prozac has any effect on growth, though I've never heard of any issue with it.

At 16 one might well be at or very near as tall as they will ever be. I remember before I was 16 I was 5'11". Final adult height 6', so didn't go too far after age 16.


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## Ehsan (Mar 21, 2009)

SSRIs increase growth hormone through 5-HT1A.
Alpha2 agonists like clonidine increase growth hormone too.

human's height increases until 20 years old however i think SSRIs and Alpha2 agonists may add several centimeters even after that.


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## meyaj (Sep 5, 2009)

Ehsan said:


> SSRIs increase growth hormone through 5-HT1A.
> Alpha2 agonists like clonidine increase growth hormone too.
> 
> human's height increases until 20 years old however i think SSRIs and Alpha2 agonists may add several centimeters even after twenties.


That's just an average, typical person (actually it looks like a male) and by no means can that be applied on an individual basis... there's actually a ton of variation. It's not uncommon for males to stop growing around 16, nor is it unheard of for them to keep growing until 22, 23 years old. Females typically stop growing, on average, at a younger age... about 2 years younger than males I believe. Females often stop growing around the age of 18, and begin puberty earlier with a corresponding earlier growth peak at around the age of 11-12 (which, interestingly, is the only point in human development where females are on average actually TALLER than males.)

Also, I wouldn't be so quick to come to the conclusion that it will help a person grow for LONGER. Kids that are given HGH can get some extra height, yes, but it seems like there's a lot more involved than just HGH. There are a lot of bodybuilders and other people who takes large amounts of HGH on a frequent basis and while it can contribute to muscle growth, it doesn't seem to contribute to that sort of skeletal growth as adults certainly don't get taller as a result of HGH therapy.


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## jim_morrison (Aug 17, 2008)

I remember in anatomy class a few years ago we learned about how we stop growing in height once our long bones stop lengthening, which happens due to the closure of our epiphyseal plates. Which occurs at approximately age 23 in men, and age 20 for women.


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