Combining SSRIs With Oral Anticoagulants Found to Increase Risk of Major Bleeding

People who take serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and oral anticoagulants have an increased risk of multiple types of major bleeding compared with people who take only oral anticoagulants, astudy inJAMA Network Open has found. The study findings also showed that bleeding risk differs depending on the type of anticoagulant.Christel Renoux, M.D., Ph.D., of Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and colleagues examined data from 331,305 patients in the United Kingdom aged 60 years or older who had atrial fibrillation and began taking oral anticoagulants between January 2, 1998, and March 29, 2021. The researchers included anticoagulants that directly target blood-clotting proteins (apixaban, dabigatran, edoxaban, and rivaroxaban), as well as warfarin, which indirectly reduces clotting by inhibiting vitamin K. They also identified if these patients were being prescribed SSRIs (citalopram, escitalopram, fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, paroxetine, or sertraline) at the same time.Patients were followed until a first major bleeding event, death, end of registration with the patient ’s internal medicine practice, or end of the study period, whichever came first.The researchers identified 42,190 patients who experienced a major bleeding event and matched each one with up to 30 similar adults taking an oral coagulant who did not experience bleeding (a total of 1,156,641 controls, though this included duplicates).Compared with patients who took only oral anticoagulants, patients who took ora...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: adverse event anticoagulant bleeding blood thinner JAMA Network Open risk factor selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor SSRI warfarin Source Type: research