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Depression is a common and serious problem in the elderly. About 15 to 20% of people aged 65 and over who live independently have symptoms of major depressive disorder. For residents of retirement homes, the rate of depression can reach 50%.
For some people, medications are an effective part of treating depression. However, when they are considering prescribing antidepressants for the elderly, health care providers need to badess the risks that these medications present for the safety and often modest benefits that they can offer compared to other patients. 39, other options.
For example, tools such as Beers Criteria® from the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) on the potentially inappropriate use of drugs in the elderly recommended to health care providers to avoid prescribing certain antidepressants to seniors with a history of falls or fractures. These include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs). Indeed, these drugs can actually increase the risk of falls and fractures.
Understanding these and other risks badociated with "potentially inappropriate medications" is essential to improving care for all of us as we age. This is why a team of researchers recently reviewed and badyzed studies to find out more about the harmful effects of antidepressants in the treatment of major depressive disorder in adults 65 years and older. Their study was published Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
The systematic review was conducted at the evidence-based practice center of the University of Connecticut (EPC). The researchers examined studies looking at the number of older adults who experienced a harmful event during the study.
The researchers examined patients aged 65 years or older who were prescribed serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) to treat the acute phase of major depressive disorder (the earliest stage of the disease, when the goal is to treat the symptoms badociated with major depressive disorder). episode of depression). They found that IRSN resulted in a greater number of harmful events than people taking a placebo (a safe sugar pill that does not have any effect on health and is prescribed to some participants in the study to help them compare their results to those of people treated with real drugs). Older adults who took SSRIs experienced about the same number of harmful events as those who took a placebo.
The researchers said that SSRIs or IRSNs led to a larger number of people leaving the study because of adverse drug events compared to placebos. They also noted that the drug duloxetine, an SSRI, increased the risk of falls.
"Some of the antidepressants have not been studied in older patients with major depression, and the studies do not often describe specific side effects." Future research in this area is essential to better determine how the profiles of patients with major depression are. The safety of different antidepressants are comparable in the elderly, "Diana M. Sobieraj, co-author of the study, Pharm.D., FCCP, BCPS, Assistant Professor, School of Pharmacy of the US. University of Connecticut.
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Material provided by American Geriatric Society. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.
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