Antidepressants in the spotlight
American researchers have shown an increased risk of stroke and death for post menopausal women taking antidepressants.
Recent research has shown that older women who take antidepressants have a statistically significant increased risk of stroke and death compared to women who do not take them. But the findings have shown that the increased risk is small and should not be a cause for alarm.
“It is possible that a statistically detectable effect may not be a problem for most people,” “said the reports lead author, Dr. Jordan W. Smoller, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The overall risk for any one woman is very small, stressed Smoller and his co-authors.
The study, published in the Dec. 14 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, compared six-year data on 5,500 postmenopausal women who began taking antidepressants after enrolling in the trial to data on more than 130,000 who did not take them.
The study found that women on selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which include Celexa, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft, were exposed to a 45 percent increase in risk for stroke and a 32 percent increase in risk for death from any cause, compared to women not taking antidepressants of any sort. Similar results were found for women on tricyclic antidepressants.
“The annual risk [of stroke] was 0.3 percent for women who did not take antidepressants, and ranged from 0.4 to 0.5 percent for women who did,” said Smoller, who is also assistant vice chairman of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. “In a sample this large, that is a statistically significant difference, but it means that by far, most women did not have a stroke.”
