The Association Of Antidepressant Use And Traffic Accident Death

The aim of this study is to investigate the association between antidepressant use and death from traffic accident. We used the national health insurance database which contains 514,866 patients between 2002 and 2012 to perform a case-crossover study. The death from traffic accident was identified from death statistics of the National Statistical Office. Exposures to antidepressant were assessed during the 7 days prior to death from traffic accident. We set four control periods with same lengths as the hazard periods, and we selected 30 days as washout period. For sensitivity analysis, we applied 14-, 30 days as length of periods. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated by conditional logistic regression. Of 1,304 death from traffic accident (mean age 64.1 ± standard deviation 10.5, 24.9% is female), antidepressant was prescribed to 23% patients. The ORs for death from traffic accident was 0.84 (95% CI 0.31-1.10), and when applying 7, 14 days of hazard periods, the ORs 0.60 (95% CI 0.31-1.16), 0.88 (95% CI 0.45-1.68). The ORs for TCAs and SSRIs was 0.33 (95% CI 0.14-0.81) and 0.70 (95% CI 0.18-2.65). We found no association of the death from traffic accident and antidepressant use, however, decreased risk was observed with TCAs.