Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSAntidepressant linked to breast cancer deaths
Women taking a popular antidepressant alongside a breast cancer drug have a higher chance of dying from the disease, doctors have said.
Researchers found that women taking paroxetine (brand name Seroxat) at the same time as breast cancer drug tamoxifen were more likely to die from the disease than women on other antidepressants.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers said their results had “major implications for clinical practice”.
The researchers - form the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University of Toronto in Canada - said many women with breast cancer also have depression, with figures showing up to one in four affected.
The study looked at 2,430 women who were taking tamoxifen and one of five anti-depressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), including paroxetine. Over a typical follow-up of 2.4 years, 374 women died from breast cancer.
According to health records analysis, women taking paroxetine were far more likely to die from breast cancer.
The study said: “We estimate that use of paroxetine for 41% of tamoxifen treatment (the median overlap in our sample) would result in one additional breast cancer death within five years of cessation of tamoxifen for every 19.7 patients so treated; the risk with more extensive overlap would be greater.”
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Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | 10-Feb-2010 0:17 am
Think this is bit scaremongering, when you look at % of deaths of women in study, could this not be atrributed to the type of cancer they had (more aggressive)?
It would be interesting to know if all the women had same type of breast cancer and if all were at roughly same stage when diagnosed and what other treatments were involved eg surgery/radiotherapy/chemo.
I think during a time of personal crisis in these womens lives there would have been positive benefits to the use of antidepressants.
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Anonymous | 15-Feb-2010 11:01 am
scaremongering headlines. I really do think there should be more scientific rigour in articles printed by the nursing times. Such headlines attack a highly vulnerable group of patients who have put their trust in the health services to provide them with the best possible care. It is up to the medical professions to lead by example and publish articles based on substantial fact and not to terrify vulnerable groups and this goes for the Nursing Times journal as well which sometimes publishes articles more fit for a tabloid than a professional journal. What are you trying to achieve - scaring the public, or educating professional nurses? There is no room for both in the same journal!
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