Antidepressants’ Effect on Health-Related Quality of Life Over Time Questioned

An observational comparative cohort study with secondary database analysis suggested that the real-world effect of using antidepressants did not continue to improve patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) over time. The study was using data from a US nationally representative database. HRQoL was measured using the SF-12 health survey and reported as physical and mental component summaries (PCS and MCS). Univariate and multivariate difference-in-differences (D-I-D) analyses were used to assess the significance of the mean difference of change on the PCS and MCS from baseline to follow-up. On average, 17.5 million adults (67.9% female, 88.9% White) were diagnosed with depression disorder each year during the period 2005–2016, 60.6% of females received antidepressants compared to 51.5% of males. Although use of antidepressants was associated with some improvement on the MCS, D-I-D univariate analysis revealed no significant difference between the cohort of patients that used antidepressants compared to the cohort of patients that did not in PCS (–0.35 vs. –0.34) or MCS (1.28 vs. 1.13). The multivariate D-I-D analyses ensured the robustness of these results. The findings are consistent with previous cohort studies and coincide with the results of a review analysis as the use of antidepressants was associated with higher rate of relapse compared to placebo, which makes the continuous prescribing of antidepressant medications a matter of preference rather than a necessity. Source: https://journals.plos.org/