Posted by Larry Hoover on June 29, 2009, at 6:57:34
In reply to Re: A similar study, posted by morganpmiller on June 28, 2009, at 22:06:28
> The first study was only done on women. Plus, neither of these studies come close to showing me anything that should concern the average SSRI user.
You're quite right to question the generalizability of what was reported here.
The study participants are all medically trained, and likely have extraordinary access to doctors and medical care through their work.
It's hard to do a direct comparison on death rates/100,000 (the standard way of expressing cause of death statitistics) between this study and the information compiled by the United States government, because they're reported under different category descriptors......but, even the worst case reported here, sudden cardiac death rate for depressed users of antidepressants, is *better* than rate for women in the U.S. population statistics. And I'm only comparing it to one cause of sudden cardiac death, so the U.S. population statistic understates the rate of death captured in this study because there are other causes of SCD than the one I selected.
I see no evidence that this correlation of sudden cardiac death with antidepressant use should concern anyone. Yes, the gravity of such a severe consequence needs more research to clearly determine if there is a causal link, but the simple and obvious joint cause explanation makes sense on its own. For these medically trained subjects, I'm absolutely certain that depression severity predicts antidepressant exposure. And depression severity is already well know to predict sudden cardiac death.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:903591
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090620/msgs/903746.html