Might Statins Improve Antidepressant Response in Depressed Cardiac Patients?

Statins have been hypothesized to have psychiatric effects, but these have ranged in various studies from worsening depression to being useful as antidepressant adjuncts. To learn more, researchers in South Korea conducted a two-part, 1-year clinical study of patients who had acute coronary syndrome and met criteria for major or minor depression.

First, 300 patients were randomized to 24 weeks of escitalopram or placebo; 226 also received cardiologist-prescribed statins. Only eight patients continued escitalopram for 1 year. At 24 weeks and at 1 year, depression response rates were significantly higher with combined treatment than with neither medication. In logistic regression analyses adjusting for initial depression and medical factors, h…