My Blog Of Knowledge: Depression Drugs Seem to Thicken Arteries

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D.on April 4, 2011

A new study reveals that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and other forms of depression medications appear to cause a thickening of arteries.

Depression is a known risk factor for heart disease and the new findings suggest antidepressants may combine with depression to detrimentally influence blood vessels.

Although thickening of the arteries is a condition that occurs with aging, researcher determined use of antidepressants caused carotid arteries to appear four years older than they actually were.

Researchers studied 513 middle-aged male twins who served during the Vietnam War. Twins were followed are they are genetically the same but may be different when it comes to other risk factors such as diet, smoking and exercise, said first author Amit Shah, M.D., a cardiology fellow at Emory University School of Medicine.

“So studying them is a good way to distill out the effects of genetics,” he said.

In the study, researchers used ultrasound to measure the thickness of the lining of the carotid or neck arteries.

Among the 59 pairs of twins where only one brother took antidepressants, the one taking the drugs tended to have thicker carotid arteries even when standard heart disease risk factors were taken into account.

The effect was seen both in twins with or without a previous heart attack or stroke.

“One of the strongest and best-studied factors that thickens someone’s arteries is age, and that happens at around 10 microns per year,” Shah said. ”In our study, users of antidepressants see an average 40 micron increase in IMT, so their carotid arteries are in effect four years older.”

Antidepressants’ effects on blood vessels may come from changes in serotonin, a chemical that helps some brain cells communicate but also functions outside the brain, Shah said.

The most commonly prescribed antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as fluoxetine (Prozac), which increase the level of serotonin in the brain. Other types of antidepressants also affect serotonin levels, and antidepressants can act on other multi-functional brain chemicals such as norepinephrine.

In the study, researchers saw thicker arteries in both participants who used SSRIs (60 percent of those who took antidepressants) and those who used other types of antidepressants.

Most of the serotonin in the body is found outside the brain, especially in the intestines, Shah noted.

In addition, serotonin is stored by platelets, the cells that promote blood clotting, and is released when they bind to a clot. However, serotonin’s effects on blood vessels are complex and act in multiple ways. It can either constrict or relax blood vessels, depending on whether the vessels are damaged or not.

“I think we have to keep an open mind about the effects of antidepressants on neurochemicals like serotonin in places outside the brain, such as the circulatory system. The body often compensates over time for drugs’ immediate effects,” Shah said.

“Antidepressants have a clinical benefit that has been established, so nobody taking these medications should stop based only on these results. This isn’t the kind of study where we can know cause and effect, let alone mechanism, and we need to see whether this holds up in other population groups.”

Source: Emory University

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