«
»

Fatal overdose with citalopram

by

The Department of Forensic Medicine at Umea University in Sweden reported on six forensically investigated suicides where overdose with the SSRI citalopram was found. In all cases, a strong evidence of acute overdose was found, and the forensic investigation did not reveal other causes or modes of death. The post-mortem concentrations of citalpram in the blood were between 5.2-49 micrograms. For comparison, in 335 other post-mortem blood analysis performed among non-overdose deaths, post mortem citalopram concentrations varied between 0.06 and 7.0 micrograms. The therapeutic concentration in post-mortem blood has been reported to be 0.3 micrograms, which is well below the concentrations in their cases. One possible mechanism of death is cardiac arrhythmias. Citalopram prolongs the QT interval. In a recent report to the Swedish Medical Products Agency the QT interval increased to 0.504 is a woman after overdose with citalopram. Seizures represent another mechanism of death, which cannot be completely ruled out. Until further study of citalopram toxicity is done the team in Sweden recommended the same precautions in prescription of citalopram as with tricyclic antidepressants to patients with a high risk of suicide.

The Lancet August 1996

Ostam, Mats; Eriksson, Anders; Thorson, Jan; Spigset, Olav

tags







Tags: , , , , ,

This entry was posted on July 24, 2007 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “Fatal overdose with citalopram”

  1. Anonymous Says:
    December 14, 2011 at 10:45 am

    What would be your next subject next week on your weblog.

  2. canada goose Says:
    November 24, 2011 at 6:35 pm

    I have to state seriously what a inspiring write-up. This is actually excellent. Carry on doing your work!!

  3. Helverson Says:
    November 24, 2011 at 5:09 am

    It is proper time to make some plans in the future and it’s also time and energy to be at liberty. We have understand this distribute and when I may We need to help you couple of attention-grabbing things or perhaps recommendations. You may might create next posts talking about this article. We desire to understand much more reasons for that!

  4. giubbotti belstaff Says:
    November 19, 2011 at 10:04 am

    I additionally got a new weblog like this, on the other hand my content material is not so great because your own. maintain up the fantastic work and hopefully we will get to see much more articles like this. Thanks.

  5. Admin Says:
    November 16, 2011 at 4:38 pm

    Senza Maniche Moncler Uomo:

    Please explain further.

  6. Senza Maniche Moncler Uomo Says:
    November 9, 2011 at 12:19 am

    you’ve got an unbelievable blog here! would you like to have request posts on my small website?

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: