Blue Mood, Smaller Brood?

When researchers linked use of antidepressant drugs to female
infertility a few years back, their analysis may have stopped a rung too
short. A recent study finds that women who've had depressive
symptoms--regardless of whether they have taken medication--are more
likely to report fertility troubles. "This suggests that drugs aren't
really the culprit," says Brown University epidemiologist Kate Lapane,
Ph.D.

What may be happening instead is that depression itself alters a
woman's hormone production, throwing off her usual reproductive cycle.
The Brown study, reported in Psychosomatic Medicine (Vol. 57, No. 6),
found that infertility was nearly twice as common among women who'd
experienced a period of hopelessness. But since many of the women didn't
have full-fledged depression, notes Lapane, the true impact of depression
on fertility could be even more severe than this study suggests.