AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Millions of Americans take antidepressants, and like all medications, they come with various physical side effects. Now researchers in the U.K. have done the largest analysis yet of how those effects vary between medications. NPR's Will Stone reports.
WILL STONE, BYLINE: Doctors have long known that antidepressants can affect your weight or cardiovascular health. But this research from The Lancet picked through the data from 58,000 people to compare and contrast the physical side effects of 30 different drugs.
TOBY PILLINGER: Like a sports league table almost of treatments, from best to worst, for all of those different physical health parameters that we were interested in.
STONE: That's Dr. Toby Pillinger, a psychiatrist at King's College London, who is the lead author of the study.
PILLINGER: And no one's ever put specific numbers to the amount of weight you'll put on, to the amount that your cholesterol will go up with each of these individual medications.
STONE: For example, the team found that one medication could on average lead to four pounds of weight loss, while another four pounds gained. Or the effect on heart rate could vary by up to 20 beats per minute depending on the drug. Pillinger says the point here is not to call out certain antidepressants as bad and others as good.
PILLINGER: The message we're trying to put out here is, actually - you know what? - no medication is the same. And we have to suit the medication to the person.
STONE: In fact, the researchers have created a free digital tool that spits out a sort of menu based on the side effects a patient cares most about. Dr. Nina Kraguljac is a professor at the Ohio State University who chairs the American Psychiatric Association's Research Council.
NINA KRAGULJAC: What surprised me about this study is that side effects are not that severe. I found it very reassuring, actually.
STONE: That was particularly true for some of the most frequently prescribed antidepressants in the U.S. Kraguljac thinks the study was well-done.
KRAGULJAC: However, it's also important to note that side effects do not happen in every patient. And side effects are not necessarily a reason to deter people from taking the medications.
STONE: One limitation was the study relied on relatively short, eight-week trials. Dr. David Hellerstein, a professor at Columbia University, says it also did not consider three side effects that his patients often bring up.
DAVID HELLERSTEIN: A lot of patients complain of sexual side effects, GI or stomach side effects. And then the third thing, which I've heard more commonly is emotional blunting. People will describe they're on antidepressant medicine and they just don't feel their feelings.
STONE: And he points out certain side effects, like weight gain, aren't necessarily negative. It can be helpful for a patient who has lost weight because of depression.
HELLERSTEIN: I would say that is not a side effect. That is a benefit of treatment.
STONE: Overall, he thinks the research will be a useful touchstone for doctors and their patients.
Will Stone, NPR News.
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