Risk of dementia in German patients treated with antidepressants in general or psychiatric practices


To study the impact of the use of antidepressants on dementia in German patients with depression treated in general (GPs) or psychiatric practices (PPs).

Patients with a first-time documentation of depression with known severity level between 2010 and 2013 (index date) were identified by 1,126 general practitioners and 176 psychiatrists in the IMS Disease Analyzer database. We included patients between the ages of 60 and 80 years who had not previously received prescriptions for antidepressant drugs and had not been diagnosed with all-cause dementia prior to or on the index date. The main outcome of the study was the risk of dementia depending on antidepressant therapy. Cox proportional hazards models (dependent variable: incident dementia) were used to adjust for confounders and to estimate the effect of antidepressant therapy.

A total of 22,838 patients treated in GPs and 33,112 patients treated in PPs were included in this study. Of those, 9,570, 30,321, and 16,059 individuals suffered from mild, moderate, and severe depression, respectively. Antidepressant drug use was associated with a decreased risk of dementia in patients affected by moderate (HR = 0.86, 95% CI: 0.77 - 0.95) or severe depression (HR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.73 - 0.94).

The use of antidepressants decreased dementia risk in patients with moderate or severe depression.
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