Anti-depressants sound warning bells for heart health

LONDON - Beware of powerful anti-depressants - they could end up endangering the hearts of the hundreds of thousands of people who take them.

Men and women taking tricyclics are 35 percent more likely to develop a range of cardiac problems, from heart attacks to strokes.

They also have a greater chance of needing bypass surgery and other heart surgeries than those taking different anti-depressants or none at all, according to the European Heart Journal.

Drugs like Amitriptyline and Lofepramine are taken to treat depression, migraines, obsessive compulsive disorder, nerve pain and panic attacks, reports the Daily Mail.

They fell out of favour after the advent of Prozac and other similar pills, but are becoming increasingly popular again as the newer drugs are not suitable for everyone and have been linked to suicide.

Researchers tracked almost 15,000 people for an average of eight years to look at the effect of drugs on large numbers of healthy men and women.

Mark Hamer, study co-author from University College London, said: “Our study is the first to contain a representative sample of the whole community.

“The majority of previous work in this area has focused on clinical cardiac patients, so studies in healthy participants are very important.

“Tricyclics have a number of side effects - they are linked to increased blood pressure, weight gain and diabetes and these are all risk factors for cardiovascular disease.”