The most widely-used antidepressant in Britain increases the risk of potentially fatal heart rhythm problems, doctors warn today.
They have found citalopram, which is prescribed to about a million people, increases the chance of having a heart problem known as Long QT Syndrome
This is when electrical impulses that control the heart take longer to ‘recharge’ between beats.
People with this syndrome are known to be at increased risk of rare heart rhythm problems including Torsade de Pointes, where the heart to stop pumping blood, which can be fatal.
Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, said they had found people taking citalopram had a “modest” increase in the time it took their hearts to recharge - called the ‘QT interval’.
In a study tracking the health of more than 38,000 people in New England for over a decade, they also found the closely related antidepressant escitalopram, and another called amitriptyline also had an effect.
The higher the dose of the drugs, the longer the QT interval.
Writing online in the British Medical Journal, they noted: “Nearly one in five patients treated with these antidepressants who underwent electrocardiography had QT intervals which would be considered abnormal.
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