Common Antidepressants Linked to Higher Fracture Odds in Menopausal Women

Women prescribed a common class of antidepressants to ease menopausal symptoms may face a long-term rise in theirs for bone fracture, a new study suggests.

The antidepressants in question are selective serotonin eruptive inhibitors (SSRI) medications such as Celexa, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft.

Besides being used to treat depression, these drugs are often prescribed as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to tackle hot flashes, night sweats and other problems that can accompany menopause.

However, “SSRIs appear to increase fracture risk among middle aged women without psychiatric disorders,” wrote a team led by Dr. Matthew Miller of Northeastern University in Boston.

The team added that the effect seems to be “sustained over time, suggesting that shorter duration of treatment may decrease [this effect].”

Findings from the study were published June 25 in the journal Injury Prevention.

Researchers sifted through data from the PharMetrics Claims Database, which collects information on drug treatments involving roughly 61 million patients nationally. They focused on more than 137,000 women between the ages of 40 and 64, all of whom began SSRI treatment at some point between 1998 and 2010.

They found that women in the SSRI group faced a 76% higher risk for fracture after a single year of SSRI use, compared with the non-SSRI group.