MedPage Today (5/20, Susman) reports a study found that “pregnant women have a higher risk of postpartum psychosis if their sisters had the same condition.” Researchers observed that the “relative recurrence risk of postpartum psychosis for siblings adjusted for birth year was 10.34, indicating that a woman is over 10 times more likely to develop postpartum psychosis if her sister had the condition compared with a woman whose sister did not have the condition.” Furthermore, they noted “the relative recurrence risk of postpartum psychosis in full siblings was 10.69 when adjusted for year of and age at childbirth.” They concluded, “Despite the higher familial risk of postpartum psychosis among full siblings, the absolute risk for women with an affected sibling was relatively low, estimated at 1.60% within the entire population.” The study was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry and presented at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting.
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