The Association of Antidepressant Use and Impulse Control Disorder in Parkinson's Disease

To examine whether initiation of an antidepressant is associated with the development of impulse control disorder (ICD) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD).

We performed a retrospective analysis utilizing data from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI). Two-sample Mann-Whitney tests were used for comparison of continuous variables and Pearson χ² tests were used for categorical variables. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to assess the hazard of ICD with antidepressant exposure.

The PPMI is a multicenter observational study of early PD with 52 sites throughout North America, Europe, and Africa.

Participants in the current study were those in the PPMI PD cohort with a primary diagnosis of idiopathic PD.

The presence of ICD was captured using the Questionnaire for Impulsive-Compulsive Disorders in Parkinson's Disease (QUIP). Antidepressant use was defined based on medication logs for each participant. Depressive symptoms were captured using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS).

A total of 1,045 individuals were included in the final analysis. There was a significant increase in the probability of ICD in those exposed to serotonergic antidepressants compared to those not exposed (Log-rank p <0.001). Serotonergic antidepressant use was associated with a hazard ratio for ICD of 1.4 (95% CI 1.0-1.8, z-value 2.1, p = 0.04) after adjusting for dopamine agonist use, depression, bupropion use, MAOI-B use, amantadine use, LEDD, disease duration, sex, and age.

Serotonergic antidepressant use appears to be temporally associated with ICD in patients with PD.