Does treatment with specific classes or types of antidepressants increase the risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest?
Use of specific antidepressants, particularly the TCA nortriptyline and the SSRI citalopram, is associated with a significantly increased risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Treatment with some types of antidepressants has been associated with sudden cardiac death. It is unknown whether the increased risk is due to a class effect or related to specific antidepressants within drug classes. All patients in Denmark with an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) were identified (2001-2007). Association between treatment with specific antidepressants and OHCA was examined by conditional logistic regression in case-time-control models. We identified 19,110 patients with an OHCA; 2,913 (15.2%) were receiving antidepressant treatment at the time of OHCA, with citalopram being the most frequently used type of antidepressant (50.8%). Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs; odds ratio (OR) = 1.69, confidence interval (CI): 1.14-2.50) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs; OR = 1.21, CI: 1.00-1.47) were both associated with comparable increases in risk of OHCA, whereas no association was found for serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors/noradrenergic and specific serotonergic antidepressants (SNRIs/NaSSAs; OR = 1.06, CI: 0.81-1.39). The increased risks were primarily driven by: citalopram (OR = 1.29, CI: 1.02-1.63) and nortriptyline (OR = 5.14, CI: 2.17-12.2). An association between cardiac arrest and antidepressant use could be documented in both the SSRI and TCA classes of drugs.
Weeke et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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