Though on one hand, antidepressants may help answer certain complications of heart patients making all their way to the patients’ table easily, a new research has a different story to say.
While it is good not just for your mind, but also your heart — as has been recently found — a class of commonly prescribed antidepressants may also increase the rate of bone loss in older men and women under its medication.
The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — the antidepressant medications treat depression by inhibiting the serotonin-transporting protein. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulated sleep and depression.
This serotonin has recently also been discovered in bone. The two new findings increase the chance of SSRIs — often prescribed to the elderly – to affect the density of bones, hence fracture risks.
According to the authors of the findings,
One potential explanation for our findings is that SSRI use may have a direct deleterious effect on bone. This theory is supported by findings of in vitro and in vivo laboratory investigations.
Our findings suggest that, in this cohort, use of SSRIs is associated with increased rates of hip bone loss. Further investigation of SSRI use and rates of change in bone mineral density in other populations with longer follow-up is warranted given the recent description of serotonin transporters in bone.
This clinically important finding opens a new horizon in understanding the prevailing public health and its links to medications, especially when the world finds itself in the epicenter of clinical depressions.
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