Do Antidepressants Mean Bone Loss for Elderly?
Physicians are skeptical over new research linking antidepressants to bone loss.
June 26, 2007 — -- Elderly people who take certain antidepressants may have something new to worry about: increased bone loss due to their medications.
Drugs like Paxil and Prozac, which are known as SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, may decrease bone density, according to a study released Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The drugs account for 62 percent of prescriptions to treat depression, suggesting that many people may be affected. But the study's authors say it's too soon to tell people they should stop taking their antidepressants.
"I would stress that people who are taking antidepressants should not stop taking them," said Dr. Susan Diem of the University of Minnesota, the study's lead author. "More work needs to be done to tell if drugs are having a direct effect on bone, or if something else is at work."
Researchers studied 2,722 older women for three years, measuring their total hip bone density periodically. At each visit, the participants brought all medications they had taken in the prior two weeks.
After adjusting for all other factors, Diem and her team noticed a difference in the bone density of women who took SSRIs. They were losing 0.82 percent bone density per year, compared with 0.47 percent loss per year in the group that wasn't taking SSRI antidepressants.
"Recently, scientists have described the presence of serotonin transporters in bone, leading to other work that says blocking serotonin in bone might impact bone health," Diem said. "We know that this is true for animals… So we decided to see if that has any impact in humans, since SSRIs work by blocking the serotonin transporters."
A related study of men, also released Monday, found that bone density in men who took SSRIs was an average of 3.9 percent lower than that of men who were not taking the antidepressants. Men taking other types of antidepressants did not see any difference in bone density.
"Every drug has risks, and we spend every day balancing risks and benefits," said Dr. Thomas Schwenk, chair of family medicine at the University of Michigan.
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