Anti-depressants likely do more harm than good, researchers find

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[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/paulandrewsdn.jpg” caption=”Evolutionary biology Paul Andrews and his team have found that anti-depressants may do patients more harm than good. In an article published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, the researchers say the effects of anti-depressants, even taken at their best, compare poorly to the risks, which include premature death in elderly patients. File photo.”]Commonly prescribed anti-depressants appear to be doing patients more harm than
good, say researchers who have published a paper examining the impact of the
medications on the entire body.

“We need to be much more cautious about the widespread use of these drugs,” said Paul
Andrews, an evolutionary biologist at McMaster and lead author of the article, published
in the online journal Frontiers in Psychology.

“It's important because millions of people are prescribed anti-depressants each year,
and the conventional wisdom about these drugs is that they're safe and effective.”

Andrews and his colleagues examined previous patient studies into the effects of anti-
depressants and determined that the benefits of most anti-depressants, even taken at
their best, compare poorly to the risks, which include premature death in elderly
patients.

Anti-depressants are designed to relieve the symptoms of depression by increasing the
levels of serotonin in the brain, where it regulates mood. The vast majority of serotonin
that the body produces, though, is used for other purposes, including digestion,
forming blood clots at wound sites, reproduction and development.

What the researchers found is that anti-depressants have negative health effects on all
processes normally regulated by serotonin.

The findings include elevated risks such as developmental problems in infants,
problems with sexual stimulation and function and sperm development in adults,
digestive problems such as diarrhea, constipation, indigestion and bloating, and
abnormal bleeding and stroke in the elderly.

The authors reviewed three recent studies showing that elderly anti-depressant users
are more likely to die than non-users, even after taking other important variables into
account. The higher death rates indicate that the overall effect of these drugs on the
body is more harmful than beneficial.

“Serotonin is an ancient chemical. It's intimately regulating many different processes,
and when you interfere with these things you can expect, from an evolutionary
perspective, that it's going to cause some harm,” Andrews said.

Millions of people are prescribed anti-depressants every year, and while the conclusions
may seem surprising, Andrews says much of the evidence has long been apparent and
available.

“The thing that's been missing in the debates about anti-depressants is an overall
assessment of all these negative effects relative to their potential beneficial effects,” he
said. “Most of this evidence has been out there for years and nobody has been looking
at this basic issue.”

In previous research, Andrews and his colleagues had questioned the effectiveness of
anti-depressants even for their prescribed function, finding that patients were more
likely to suffer relapse after going off their medications as their brains worked to re-
establish equilibrium.

With even the intended function of anti-depressants in question, Andrews says it is
important to look critically at their continuing use.

“It could change the way we think about such major pharmaceutical drugs,” he said.
“You've got a minimal benefit, a laundry list of negative effects – some small, some rare
and some not so rare. The issue is: does the list of negative effects outweigh the
minimal benefit?”