Antidepressants good for heart, say experts

Researchers at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, U.S., established that a commonly used type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may perk up cardiovascular health by influencing the manner in which platelets accumulate.

Platelets are cell fragments in blood involved in clotting,

Study author, Dr. Evangelos Litinas, research associate, Loyola University Medical Center was quoted by Business Week as saying, “The reason we’re doing this is to better the lives of depressed patients.”

Details of the research
Researchers carried out tests on 50 people to determine the effects antidepressants had on those taking them regularly.

To arrive at comparative results, the subjects were divided into two groups of 25 people each.

The first group had patients with depression taking the antidepressant, SSRI. Another group had healthy subjects not taking any such medication.

Researchers collected subjects’ blood samples at the commencement of the protocol and also during the fourth and eighth week of the study.

After this, they separated the blood into its elements to obtain the platelet-rich plasma for study.

Then they treated all samples with platelet-activating substances and with saline, non-activating substances.

Further, they monitored platelet-activity by measuring the amount of accumulation in each sample by using an aggregometer--machine that directs light into liquid samples.

Study findings
After four weeks’ analysis of blood samples, researchers found that when platelets of healthy subjects were treated with platelet-activating substances, there was an amassing of 95 percent of the cells.

Conversely, participants taking SSRI had mere 37 percent of cell-accumulation. This signified that SSRI was somehow able to inhibit or alter the platelets’ ability to unite.

However, after eight weeks it was found that platelets of SSRI-treated patients aggregated more than the ones drawn after four weeks.

Hence, it was revealed that SSRIs had great bearing on thwarting platelet-activation early during treatment.

Litinas owed it to the fact that body takes some weeks to modulate the SSRIs.

Litinas was quoted in Business Week as saying, “There is clear evidence that depressed patients have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, and we want to eliminate that. Since depression can be treated with an SSRI, maybe the cardiovascular disease risk can also be decreased.”

Researchers stressed on more research with 12-week mark including another brand of SSRI.

The findings will be presented at the American Physiological Society’s annual Experimental Biology conference.