In the study of more than 45,000 women with early-stage breast
malignancies, 13 percent of patients previously treated with
antidepressants died within five years of their cancer diagnosis,
compared with 11 percent of women who hadn’t ever taken medication
for depression.
“We did not find that women with depression were diagnosed at later
stages,” said lead study author Dr. Nis Palm Suppli of the Danish
Cancer Society Research Center in Copenhagen.
Instead, women with depression may be less likely to start or
continue recommended treatments based on individual factors
including a patient’s age, tumor size, the type of cancer and how
far it has spread in the body, Suppli added by email.
Many people develop depression as a result of a cancer diagnosis,
but to identify the possible effect of depression on cancer
prognosis, rather than the other way around, researchers focused on
women with a history of depression before their cancer diagnosis,
the study team writes in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
They analyzed data on Danish women diagnosed with breast cancer from
1998 to 2011.
Overall, 6,068 women, or 13 percent, had been treated with
antidepressants, and another 744, or 2 percent, had previously been
hospitalized for depression.
When women had a history of depression, they were 14 percent more
likely to receive breast cancer care that didn’t follow recommended
treatment guidelines, the study found.
With depression history, women were also 21 percent more likely to
die of any cause during the study and 11 percent more likely to die
of breast cancer.
The study doesn’t prove depression causes worse outcomes for women
with breast cancer.
Even so, the findings suggest that doctors should take extra care
with women who have a history of depression to make sure these
patients start all recommended treatments and continue with therapy
that can sometimes be needed for several years, Suppli said.
That’s because depression might lead some women to miss treatments
or fail to take daily medications as directed. In the worst cases,
depression may also lead to suicidal thoughts that make women
discontinue cancer therapy.
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Previous research also suggests certain antidepressants may make
some breast cancer medications less effective when they’re taken at
the same time.
One limitation of the study is that researchers lacked some data on
depression that might mean some women counted as lacking a history
of mental illness might actually have one, the authors note. They
also lacked data needed to identify women with undiagnosed or
untreated depression or women who received psychotherapy without
medication for the condition.
Still, the findings highlight the potential for depression to
influence the care women receive, said Dr. Harold Burstein, a
researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston and a breast cancer
expert for the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
“It remains unclear why a history of depression might be linked to
less favorable outcomes,” Burstein, who wasn’t involved in the
study, said by email.
“The concern is that depression might compromise standard care,”
Burstein added. “For instance, perhaps women who are depressed are
less likely to get mammograms, or to receive timely evaluations and
treatment for breast cancer, but this is just speculation.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2fSiQ9I Journal of Clinical Oncology, online
November 14, 2016.
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