Singulair being investigated for risk of suicide

[PeeWee137]

hey all

since you all know i am a tv expert, i had to ask about this. i heard on the news that they are studying singulair and other leukotriene antagonists for an increased risk of depression/suicide.

i dont understand how leukotrienes could be involved in the pathophysiology of depression. can anyone suggest an article that discusses this? i cant seem to find any.

the scare-mongering is getting annoying, but i figure i should try to at least make it into a learning opportunity.

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[Faebinder]

hey all

since you all know i am a tv expert, i had to ask about this. i heard on the news that they are studying singulair and other leukotriene antagonists for an increased risk of depression/suicide.

i dont understand how leukotrienes could be involved in the pathophysiology of depression. can anyone suggest an article that discusses this? i cant seem to find any.

the scare-mongering is getting annoying, but i figure i should try to at least make it into a learning opportunity.

Sometimes, unrelated therapies can cause mental adverse events. I bet they didnt expect Interferon for Melanoma and Hep B/C would cause depression.

 

[TheWowEffect]

Sometimes, unrelated therapies can cause mental adverse events. I bet they didnt expect Interferon for Melanoma and Hep B/C would cause depression.

Absolutely. Psychiatric complications can occur with so many medications. Clinically, they are under recognised and under appreciated but if you look at pubmed, there are tons of articles for most major meds. Let's see how thing Singulair thing pans out.

 

[Doc Samson]

hey all

since you all know i am a tv expert, i had to ask about this. i heard on the news that they are studying singulair and other leukotriene antagonists for an increased risk of depression/suicide.

i dont understand how leukotrienes could be involved in the pathophysiology of depression. can anyone suggest an article that discusses this? i cant seem to find any.

the scare-mongering is getting annoying, but i figure i should try to at least make it into a learning opportunity.

Charlie Nemeroff at Emory has done a lot of work on depression and the inflammatory response. Would try a pubmed search for CB Nemeroff and see what you find.

 

[Anasazi23]

You know what else is dangerous? Dying from bronchial constriction.

Eggs are good.
Eggs are bad.
Eggs are good.
Eggs are bad.
Eggs are good.
Eggs are bad.

 

[whopper]

I haven't seen the data to back this up. When investigating studies which make claims like this, its important to distinguish between suicide attempt vs successful suicides.

Suicide is rather difficult to accomplish, often times because the person did not properly know how to complete the act. Police for example are cited for having high rates of suicide which caused several to believe the stress of the job pushed in that direction. However others believe a police officer's access to a firearm allows him/her to have a high rate of success with the attempt. This then implies that police experience depression no more or at least not as much as we'd at first think vs the general population when seeing their high suicide rates. The same goes for high suicide rates among psychiatrists & dentists.

It could be that patients on specific meds have a higher rate of suicide, not because of the medication causing depression (or other psyche sx that can push to suicide, e.g. mania or psychosis can do it too) but that the medication may be toxic, allowing it to be a means to accomplish the suicide. Or of course, it could be both.

If you do have any links to data, please post them. I'd like to look at it.

In any case, there are a number of very interesting studies with the inflammatory response & mood.

 

[PeeWee137]

Charlie Nemeroff at Emory has done a lot of work on depression and the inflammatory response. Would try a pubmed search for CB Nemeroff and see what you find.

thank you for the name. boy do i have some reading to do!

it just seems contradictory to me - i would think reducing/modifying the inflammatory response would lessen depression. like i said, i have some reading to do.

thanks again.