Hypertension Medications Associated With Mental Disorders
Based on the results of a recent study, researchers suggest that people on medications to treat high blood pressure may be at increased risk for depression and other mental health problems (published online ahead of print October 10, 2016).
The study, published in Hypertension, sought to determine if antihypertensive drugs may have a role in the pathogenesis or course of mood disorders through the analysis of patients on monotherapy with different classes of antihypertensive drugs from a large hospital database of 525,046 patients with follow-up for 5 years.
Out of the total database, 144,066 patients, between the ages of 40 to 80 years, were eligible for inclusion. The burden of comorbidity assessed by Charlson and Elixhauser scores showed an independent linear association with mood disorder diagnosis. The median time to hospital admission with mood disorder was 847 days for the 299 admissions (641,685 person-years of follow-up).
The study found that common prescription medications used to treat high blood pressure (beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, and angiotensin antagonists) were associated with hospital visits for depression and bipolar disorder. People taking a beta blocker or calcium channel blocker were twice as likely to have been hospitalized with a mood disorder as those taking an angiotensin antagonist.
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Moreover, patients taking an angiotensin antagonist were 53% less likely to have been hospitalized with a mood disorder than those who took no blood pressure medication. Thiazide diuretics were not associated with any risk for mood-disorder hospitalization.
“There is a lot of data that depression and cardiovascular disease are related…but current hypertensive practices do not consider depression,” lead study author Sandosh Padmanabhan, MD, PhD, (University of Glasglow, UK) said in a statement to CNN. “This validated those (earlier) findings, but also means blood pressure tablets could be repurposed for mental health conditions.”
Dr Padmanabhan also commented that “There could be some people who are predisposed to depression who we should not be giving these drugs….If angiotensin blockers are protective, then there is a role to repurpose them.”
Authors noted that the study was observational, thus they are not sure of what is occurring at the molecular levels to cause these results. Nonetheless, the finding could have important implications, specifically when exploring new prevention methods or treatments for depression.—Amanda Del Signore
