Depression drugs may interfere with sleep

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older women treated with an antidepressant drug belonging to the class called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) appears to increase the risk of having poor sleep quality, taking longer to get to sleep, and having other sleep disturbances, new research suggests.

Commonly prescribed SSRIs include Paxil, Luvox, Zoloft, Serozone and Prozac.

Several reports have found a relationship between SSRI drugs and poor sleep, but most studies have only included a small number of patients and have focused on younger adults with major depression, according to the report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society

To determine if previous findings also apply to older women residing in the community, including those without depression, Dr. Kristine E. Ensrud, from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, and colleagues analyzed data from 223 SSRI users and 2,630 subjects who did not use any antidepressants. The participants, all at least 71 years old, represented a subgroup of women enrolled in an osteoporosis study.

To monitor sleep function, the women were given an actigraph to monitor sleep function that they wore, on average, for four consecutive 24-hour periods. Based on Geriatric Depression Scale scores, 2337 had no evidence of depression and the remainder did, the investigators note.

In the overall group, as well as the subgroup without depression, sleep disturbances were more common in SSRI users than in nonusers.

For women without evidence of depression, SSRI use increased the risk of sleeping for 5 hours or less, sleeping well less than 70 percent of the time and, taking 1 hour or longer to fall asleep, and experiencing eight or more lengthy episodes of sleepless per night by 2.15-, 2.37-, 3.99-, and 1.75-fold, respectively.

"These results raise some uncertainty regarding the risks and benefits of SSRI use in the older population and suggest that the potential for sleep disturbance should be considered when prescribing SSRIs to older people in clinical practice," the authors conclude.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, October 2006.