Background
Approximately one million cancer patients live in Ukraine. These persons are at a high
risk of manifestation of psychiatric disorders, especially depressive spectrum disorders and
anxiety disorders, which may be treated with antidepressants if indications are present.
Besides, oncological patients suffer from a number of miscellaneous somatic and
psychosomatic conditions, that may also be totally or partly alleviated by using
antidepressants. Thus, proper safe and evidence-based usage of these drugs is required.
Unfortunately, there’s a lack of Ukrainian scientific literature highlighting this issue.
This review is published to fulfill the aforementioned gap.
Objectives
To survey the usage of antidepressants in the cohort of cancer patients, to evaluate a
modern state of evidence base concerning this issue, and to study indications,
contraindications, and other peculiarities in respect of prescribing these drugs to
oncological patients.
Methods
We reviewed and analyzed literature (meta-analyses, RTCs, observational studies, case
studies) published in the last 10 years by searching PubMed and Google Scholar. We used the
following keywords: “antidepressants”, “oncology”, “cancer”, “cancer symptoms”, “depression”
and “drug interaction”. For our purposes, we also used NCCN, ASCO, ESMO, IPOS guidelines in
case they were available and concerned our subject.
Results
The review focuses attention on the usage of antidepressants in oncological patients.
Best-practice recommendations for choosing a drug are given, information on a drug-to-drug
interaction with chemotherapy and other common in oncology drugs, issues with regard to
comorbid somatic problems that define prescribing, and off-label indications (pain, hot
flushes, pruritus, etc.) are discussed.
Conclusion
Despite the paucity of high-quality researches, a huge amount of evidences support the
statement, that antidepressants significantly improve cancer patients’ quality of life by
ceasing both depressive/anxious symptoms and typical cancer-related symptoms. To provide
best professional help with these drugs, implementation of guidelines recommendations as
well as adherence to experience collected from prescribing antidepressants to non-cancer
population, which supports the effectiveness of this class of drugs for the treatment of
depression, anxiety and pain are essential.