Spanish Agency for Medicines and Healthcare Products reported that some of antidepressants which refer to class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) might be associated with bleeding in the upper gastrointestinal tract. According to a new article of Francisco J. de Abajo, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. of the Spanish Agency for Medicines the effects increased when antidepressants are combined with other stomach-harming medications and decreased when acid-suppressing agents are used.

Luis A. Garcia-Rodriguez, M.D., M.Sc. of the Spanish Centre for Pharmacoepidemiologic Research, Madrid, Spain, considered more than one thousand of patients who had been referred to a specialist or hospitalized because of stomach bleeding between 2001 and 2005.

Since the early 1990s there were many case reports that made scientists suggest a link between SSRIs and bleeding in the upper gastrointestinal tract. "Antidepressants are widely used and this requires research to make better estimates of bleeding risk and to name factors that may increase the risk more. It appears particularly important to determine whether using acid-suppressing agents may reduce the risk," the authors write.

Individuals with upper GI bleeding were significantly more likely than controls to be taking SSRIs (5.3 percent vs. 3.0 percent) or venlafaxine (1.1 percent vs. 0.3 percent). However in more than 10,000 patients the same age and sex studied did not have upper GI bleeding.

The British Medical Journal has published a new research about low back pain. It has shown that recovery is much slower than previously thought and ev...

ScienceDaily reported that new study of peripheral nerve surgery to alleviate long-standing pain and numbness in patients with diabetic neuropathy was...