12Jun
Clinical study shows that antidepressants are effective in depressed patients with heart disease.
Previous research has shown that depression and heart disease are linked. Depressed patients tend to have worse cardiac outcomes, so there is a strong case for treating depression in the context of heart disease. In a new study. Researchers in Canada report that citalopram, an antidepressant, is effective in treating depressed heart patients.
They divided a group of 284 patients into two. The first received psychotherapy or normal management, the second citalopram or placebo. In the therapy group, there was no difference between receiving therapy and having normal management – though patients’ symptoms of depression improved in both cases. Citalopram was found to be superior to placebo in relieving depression and this extended to improvements in perceptions of social support and daily functioning. It’s thought that depression makes patients less likely to comply with treatment for heart disease and there may be other reasons why it worsens outcomes. This study shows the depression can be treated. What we do not yet know is whether such treatment also improves the cardiac outcome.
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