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November 26th, 2004

"Antidepressants have increased risk of abnormal bleeding"

The use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) antidepressant drugs may increase risk of abnormal bleeding leading to hospital admission, according to an article in the November 22 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine based on a Dutch study.

In the article, case reports and observational studies have shown a relationship between SSRIs and abnormal bleeding. Due to serotonin''s role in blood clotting, and the ability for SSRIs to affect serotonin levels, the antidepressants may be associated to an increased risk of bleeding.

The authors wrote in the article that they “found a significant association between degree of serotonin reuptake inhibition by antidepressants and risk of hospital admission for abnormal bleeding.” E.R. Heerdink, the lead author and a researcher at the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Netherlands, and his team looked at nearly 64,700 individuals that had gotten their first antidepressant prescription from 1992 to 2000. Following them for an average of 229 days, the team found 196 of the patients were admitted to the hospital with a primary diagnosis of bleeding in the uterus, upper gastrointestinal tract, brain or other sites.

In some previous studies and case reports, a link between antidepressants and abnormal bleeding has been shown, especially with SSRIs. Researchers plan on continuing to study the link between antidepressant use and abnormal bleeding, though they say that the absolute risk is small.