A new study revealed that antidepressants could speed up brain decline in some of the dementia patients.
According to HealthDay, antidepressants are commonly prescribed to people dealing with anxiety, depression, aggressiveness, and sleeplessness, which are also symptoms of dementia. But a Swedish study suggested that a specific class of antidepressants could accelerate dementia.
The study published in the journal BMC Medicine found that heavier doses of certain selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) medications could speed up cognitive decline.
A senior investigator of the study, Sara Garcia Ptacek, an assistant, said, “Depressive symptoms can both worsen cognitive decline and impair quality of life, so it is important to treat them.”
“Our results can help doctors and other healthcare professionals choose antidepressants that are better adapted for patients with dementia,” she added in a news release.
Moreover, after tracking the brain health of more than 18,700 patients from the Swedish Registry for Cognitive/Dementia Disorders for more than four years, the researchers found that 23% of patients received different prescriptions for an antidepressant, while 65% of the patients were prescribed SSRIs.
The researcher also noted that if a patient takes higher-than-usual doses of certain SSRIs, it could cause a faster decline in brain function in people with dementia by an extra 0.42 points on a 0 to 30 scale in a year.
