From CNN. Doctors often use antidepressants to manage the depression, anxiety and agitation that accompanies a diagnosis of dementia. Now, a new study suggests the use of antidepressants may hasten the cognitive decline of people with dementia. It’s a conclusion that some experts consider unwarranted.
“We found that patients with dementia who took antidepressants had greater cognitive decline over time,” said senior study author Sara Garcia Ptacek, an assistant professor in neurosciences at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden.
The study, published Monday in the journal BMC Medicine, analyzed medical data from 2007 to 2018 on 4,271 people with dementia enrolled in the Swedish Registry for Cognitive/Dementia Disorders, a repository on dementia research. All the participants had been on antidepressants for at least six months before the study began. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, known as SSRIs, were the most common antidepressants prescribed.
The more severe the dementia, the stronger the association between antidepressant use and cognitive decline, the study said.
