Pharmacovigilance study confirms modest QT interval prolongation with antidepressant use

Source: BMJ Area: News The US Food and Drug Administration issued a warning in 2011 that citalopram had been associated with QT prolongation, based on post-marketing surveillance and a small crossover study. However no studies have explored this risk in general clinical populations, or its specificity for citalopram.   This US cross sectional study explored the relationship between citalopram and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors on corrected QT interval (QTc), a marker of risk for ventricular arrhythmia, in a large and diverse clinical population.   A total of 38,397 adult patients with an electrocardiogram (ECG) recorded after prescription of antidepressant or methadone between February 1990 and August 2011 were indentified using electrocardiographic, prescribing, and clinical data from electronic healthcare records from a large New England healthcare system comprising two academic medical centres and outpatient clinics.   The outcome measure for the main ...
Source: NeLM - Mental Health - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: news