Posts

Showing posts from January, 2019

Can antidepressants lead to depression?

Image
A recent German epidemiological study (https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehy694/5195184) suggests that there may be no benefit to treating people with stage 1 hypertension (systolic blood pressure between 130-139 and diastolic blood pressure of 80-89) with antihypertensives for anyone apart from the drug companies who could almost double their patient populations by having almost 2 thirds of adults diagnosed with elevated blood pressure. Not only is there no benefit, but there is a potential risk of great harm. This German study, where more than 11 000 mostly middle aged men and women were followed up over a 10 year period, revealed that cardiovascular mortality rates were pretty much identical for people told they have normal blood pressure. The study was part of the MONICA trial, and was done from 1984-1995, so rather a long time ago now. Perhaps this explains the very high prevalence in cigarette smoking of 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 people. Al