BMJ  2007;334 (3 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39113.523762.3A

Editor's Choice

US editor's choice

On dying and dyeing

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The risk of suicide associated with antidepressant treatment has gotten a lot of attention recently. Annalisa Rubino and colleagues analyzed data from more than 200 000 British general practice patients in a retrospective cohort study (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39041.445104.BE) of suicides in patients on antidepressants. After statistical adjustments for potential confounding characteristics, patients who had taken venlafaxine were significantly more likely to have died by suicide than patients on citalopram, fluoxetine, or dothiepin. The authors acknowledge, however, that they couldn't control for everything, and that patients taking venlafaxine had more suicide risk factors and might have been different in other, unmeasured ways. In an accompanying editorial, Andrea Cipriani et al (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39098.457720.BE) agree that retrospective studies don't usually prove anything conclusively, but they feel that the consistency of the findings argues that venlafaxine should not be used as a first-line drug for depression.

Ursula Braun and colleagues analyze (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39048.475046.68. . . [Full text of this article]

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