Antidepressants known as SSRIs increase risk of cataracts, study says

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The family of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs increases the risk of developing cataracts by about 15%, but some members of the family produce a higher risk, researchers said Tuesday. Fluvoxamine (Luvox) increases the risk by 39%, venlafaxine (Effexor) increases the risk by 33% and paroxetine (Paxil) increases the risk by 23%, Canadian researchers reported in the June issue of the journal Ophthalmology.

Previous research had shown that oral and inhaled steroids, beta-blockers and an older antidepressant called amitriptyline also increase the risk of cataracts. A recent Swedish study also suggested that hormone replacement therapy raises the risk.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world, and antidepressants are one of the most commonly prescribed families of drugs, with an estimated 10% of the U.S. population taking them. A 15% increase in risk translates into nearly 19,000 cases of cataracts in the U.S. each year, the researchers estimated.

Research presented Monday at a San Francisco meeting of the American Urological Assn. showed that SSRIs taken by pregnant women increase the risk of spontaneous abortions.

The results are not totally surprising. The eye is known to have serotonin receptors in its lens, and animal models have shown that serotonin can increase opacity of the lens and lead to cataracts. But the phenomenon has not been studied in humans before, the researchers said.

Pharmacologist Mahyar Etminan of the Vancouver Coastal Health Reesarch Institute and his colleagues used interlinked Canadian health records to study 18,784 cataract patients and 187,840 healthy controls over the age of 65. The average time to diagnosis of cataracts after beginning SSRI therapy was 656 days. Some other antidepressants did not appear to be associated with cataract risk, but that may be because there were not enough patients in the group taking them to give accurate results.

The study needs to be replicated, Etminan said, but if it is, physicians should be wary about prescribing the drugs to the elderly who may already have eye problems.

— Thomas H. Maugh II