Posted by Phillipa on February 24, 2010, at 22:53:36
Maybe some of you heard that effexor was linked to sudden cardiac death I didn't but the drug company says the incresed deaths are from overdose? Phillipa strange never heard this before?
From Reuters Health Information
Venlafaxine Not Linked to Sudden Cardiac DeathNEW YORK (Reuters Health) Feb 22 - The antidepressant venlafaxine is not linked to an excess risk of sudden cardiac death or to life-threatening arrhythmias compared with other common antidepressants, according to a nested case-control study reported online in BMJ on February 10th.
"These findings, based on over 200,000 patients treated for depression, provide solid evidence that venlafaxine is as safe on the heart as other antidepressant drugs," co-author Dr. Samy Suissa of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal told Reuters Health by email.
Concerns that venlafaxine, a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, was less safe than selective serotonin receptor inhibitors led to regulatory action by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in December 2004. In May 2006, the MHRA softened its regulatory position after further review, advising only that venlafaxine be avoided in patients with uncontrolled hypertension or at very high risk for ventricular arrhythmias.
Using data from the United Kingdom General Practice Research Database, the researchers examined whether the risk of sudden cardiac death or near death was higher with venlafaxine than with fluoxetine, citalopram, or dosulepin.
The authors collected 10 years of data (1995-2005) on patents with a diagnosis of depression or anxiety who started to use these antidepressants. The study outcome was sudden cardiac death or near death, defined as a malignant ventricular tachyarrhythmia, sudden death due to cardiac causes, or out-of-hospital death from acute cardiac ischemia.
Ultimately, over a mean follow-up of 3.3 years, there were 568 cases of sudden cardiac death or near death among the 207,384 individuals in the registry. The overall rate of sudden cardiac death or near death was 8.21 per 10,000 person-years.
The researchers matched each case with up to 30 controls, for a total of 14,812 control subjects.
There was no evidence that venlafaxine increased the risk of sudden cardiac death or near death relative to fluoxetine (adjusted odds ratio, 0.66), citalopram (aOR, 0.89), or dosulepin (aOR, 0.83).
"We believe that the suspected higher risks that motivated our study were likely due to its toxicity from overdose," Dr. Suissa said. "Physicians and families should nevertheless remain vigilant regarding the potential risks of overdoses of this and other antidepressant drugs."
The study was funded by Wyeth, which manufactures venlafaxine and markets it as Effexor.
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