• Jae-Min Kim, Robert Stewart, Yong-Seong Lee, Hee-Joon Lee, Min Chul Kim, Ju-Wan Kim, Hee-Ju Kang, Kyung-Yeol Bae, Sung-Wan Kim, Il-Seon Shin, Young Joon Hong, Ju Han Kim, Youngkeun Ahn, Myung Ho Jeong, and Jin-Sang Yoon.
• Department of Psychiatry, Chonnam National University Medical School, Republic of Korea.
• JAMA. 2018 Jul 24; 320 (4): 350-358.

ImportanceDepression has been associated with poorer medical outcomes in acute coronary syndrome (ACS), but there are few data on the effects of antidepressant treatment on long-term prognosis.ObjectiveTo investigate the effect on long-term major adverse cardiac events (MACE) of escitalopram treatment of depression in patients with recent ACS.Design, Setting, And ParticipantsRandomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted among 300 patients with recent ACS and depression enrolled from May 2007 to March 2013, with follow-up completed in June 2017, at Chonnam National University Hospital, Gwangju, South Korea.InterventionsPatients were randomly assigned to receive either escitalopram in flexible dosages of 5, 10, 15, or 20 mg/d (n = 149) or matched placebo (n = 151) for 24 weeks.Main Outcomes And MeasuresThe primary outcome was MACE, a composite of all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction (MI), and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Four secondary outcomes were the individual MACE components of all-cause mortality, cardiac death, MI, and PCI. Cox proportional hazards models were used to compare the escitalopram and placebo groups by time to first MACE.ResultsAmong 300 randomized patients (mean age, 60 years; 119 women [39.3%]), 100% completed a median of 8.1 (interquartile range, 7.5-9.0) years of follow-up. MACE occurred in 61 patients (40.9%) receiving escitalopram and in 81 (53.6%) receiving placebo (hazard ratio [HR], 0.69; 95% CI, 0.49-0.96; P = .03). Comparing individual MACE outcomes between the escitalopram and placebo groups, respectively, incidences for all-cause mortality were 20.8% vs 24.5% (HR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.51-1.33; P = .43), for cardiac death, 10.7% vs 13.2% (HR, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.41-1.52; P = .48); for MI, 8.7% vs 15.2% (HR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.27-0.96; P = .04), and for PCI, 12.8% vs 19.9% (HR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.33-1.04; P = .07).Conclusions And RelevanceAmong patients with depression following recent acute coronary syndrome, 24-week treatment with escitalopram compared with placebo resulted in a lower risk of major adverse cardiac events after a median of 8.1 years. Further research is needed to assess the generalizability of these findings.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00419471.

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