People taking antidepressants show a higher weight gain than those who do not undergo this treatment, according to a study by the Research Institute of Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Spain. Researchers analyzed data from participants in the REGICOR study (Gerundense Heart Registry) over more than six years to establish this relationship. According to Hospital del Mar, the study, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, concludes that the weight gain is around 2% for all those who took this type of treatment at any point during the study.
The researchers followed 3,127 adults for six years, 1,700 of whom were women, with an average age of 55 years. 16.4% of participants reported taking antidepressants, some continuously throughout the follow-up (5.1%), others who started taking them during the study (6.2%), or those who were taking them at the beginning and stopped during this period (5.1%). All participants gained weight over the six years of follow-up (an average increase of half a kilogram), but this increase was greater among those who followed this treatment with antidepressants.
The study accounted for the already known bidirectional relationship between depression and obesity, as well as other associated factors such as low adherence to healthy diets or lack of physical exercise. Despite this, the relationship between the consumption of antidepressants and weight gain remained, independently of age, sex, socioeconomic level, lifestyle, and the presence or absence of depression symptoms.
Thus, those who were taking antidepressants at the beginning and stopped gained an additional 1.8% weight compared to those who never took them. People who started consuming antidepressants during the follow-up and those who took them and continued to do so during the study increased their weight by 2%.
These data lead the research team to warn that the treatment of depression must take into account other possibilities beyond pharmacological approaches. "In light of the risk of patient adherence loss – stopping antidepressant treatment – due to weight gain, we must consider therapeutic alternatives that complement pharmacological treatment," said the head of the Psychiatry Service at Hospital del Mar, Víctor Pérez. Depression affects 280 million people worldwide and is the most prevalent mental disorder, affecting women twice as much as men.
