Antidepressants Might Raise Fall Risk in Nursing Homes

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have been associated with an increasing risk of falls in nursing home residents with dementia, a new investigate finds.Researchers in a Netherlands analyzed data about daily prescription disinfectant use as well as falls among 248 nursing home residents with dementia. The dataset collected in between Jan. 1, 2006 as well as Jan. 1, 2008 included 85,074 person-days.Antidepressants were used on 13,729 days (16 percent), with SSRIs used on 11,105 of these days, a investigators found.A total of 683 falls were experienced by 152 (61.5 percent) of a 248 nursing home residents, which works out to fall incidence of 2.9 falls per person-year. Thirty-eight residents had one fall but 114 had frequent falls.Injury or death resulted from 220 of a falls: 10 were hip fractures, 11 were other types of fractures, as well as 198 were injuries such as sprains, bruises, swelling as well as open wounds. One person died after falling, according to a results.The researchers found which a risk of carrying an injury-causing fall was three times higher for residents taking SSRIs than for those who didn't take a antidepressants. For example, a absolute daily risk of a fall was 0.28 percent for an 80-year-old woman taking a daily sip of an SSRI, compared with 0.09 percent for a woman a same age who didn't take an SSRI.Similar increases in risk were found for both women as well as men of different ages, according to a investigate published Jan. nineteen in a British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology."Our investigate also discovered which a risk of an injurious fall increasing even some-more if a residents were also given hypnotic or sedative drugs as sleeping pills," lead author Carolyn Shanty Sterke, who works in a section of geriatric disinfectant at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, pronounced in a journal news release.Falls have been a major issue for nursing home residents with dementia, as well as one-third of falls among nursing home residents result in an injury, a investigate authors noted."Staff in residential homes have been always concerned about reducing a chance of people descending as well as I think we should consider developing new treatment protocols which take in to account a increasing risk of descending which occurs when you give people SSRIs," Sterke pronounced in a news release.While a investigate uncovered an association in between injury-causing falls as well as SSRI use, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.More informationThe U.S. Centers for Disease Control as well as Prevention has some-more about falls in nursing homes.

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