First-of-its-kind study shows antidepressants are safe

Reviewed by Kate Anderton, B.Sc. (Editor)Oct 2 2019

Antidepressants are safe, with adverse effects generally being due to existing psychiatric conditions, according to new research.

A study published today, believed to be the first of its kind, did not find any strong evidence that the drugs are unsafe.

In the JAMA Psychiatry study, researchers from various international institutions from Europe, USA, Canada and Asia have shown that antidepressants are overall safe. By assessing evidence from 45 meta-analyses, they did not find any strong evidence of adverse health outcomes associated with antidepressant use.

As far as we know, this is the first study to assess the safety and adverse events associated with antidepressant use on such a large scale,considering real-world data."

Dr Elena Dragioti, Study Lead Author, University ofLinköping, Sweden

"Researchers systematically assessed the evidence from more than 1,000 observational studies included in the 45 reviewed meta-analyses, covering different age groups, underlying psychiatric conditions, and possible adverse effects."

Dr Trevor Thompson, from the University of Greenwich, added: "It is important to study the effects of antidepressant medication over several years, as we did here, as unwanted effects will not always show up during the typically relatively short timeframe of a clinical trial.

"Furthermore, studying the responses of those actually taking anti-depressants in the real world provides important information on their effects across a wide range of people, and not just those who sign up for clinical trials."

There has been a sharp growth of antidepressantuse worldwide. The drugs rank third among prescribed and fourth among sold medications, and it is estimated that up to 8-10% of American adults take at least one antidepressant. However, the safety profile of antidepressants has remained somewhat controversial.

"We found that all claimed adverse events reported in observational studies, supported by strong evidence, were actually highly likely due to the underlying psychiatric conditions for which antidepressants were prescribed. Most of these studies also suffered from several relevant biases." said Dr Marco Solmi, visiting researcher atKing's College London,who co-led the study.

Senior author Dr Evangelos Evangelou, from Imperial College London, added: "Even though we have shown that antidepressants are generally and overall safe, we should also note that adverse effects need to be monitored clinically during antidepressant treatment and that limited evidence exists from randomised clinical trials on long-term adverse events.

"Moreover, we also acknowledge that we were not able to assess several newer antidepressants due to limited available data"