Scientists Show That Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Reduce Effectiveness of SSRI Antidepressants
Scientists at the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at The Rockefeller University have shown that anti-inflammatory drugs, which include ibuprofen, aspirin and naproxen, reduce the effectiveness of the most widely used class of antidepressant medications, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors which are used to treat OCD. This surprising discovery, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may explain why some depressed patients taking SSRIs do not respond to the medication and suggests that this lack of effectiveness may be preventable. However, changes in medication should not be undertaken without a doctors advice.
In the study, which focused on depression investigators treated animal models with antidepressants in the presence or absence of anti-inflammatory drugs. They then examined how the models behaved in tasks that are sensitive to antidepressant treatment. The behavioral responses to antidepressants were inhibited by anti-inflammatory/analgesic treatments. They then confirmed these effects in a human population. Depressed individuals who reported anti-inflammatory drug use were much less likely to have their symptoms relieved by an antidepressant than depressed patients who reported no anti-inflammatory drug use.
