Riesgo de suicidio asociado a factores clínicos y farmacológicos: estudio de casos y controles

Abstract

A retrospective analytical population-based study of cases and controls has been carried out to identify and explore clinical and pharmacological factors associated with death by suicide in those people who have had previous interaction with the public health system. The cases were obtained from the records of the Institut de Medicina Legal i Ciències Forenses de Catalunya for the province of Barcelona during the years 2010 to 2015, and the controls were randomly selected from the population attended by primary care centers in the same period, in a ratio of 20 to 1 and with a distribution of age, sex and place of residence equal to the cases. Data from primary care registries and drug invoicing were linked, extracted and anonimised for the study. Clinical, healthcare and social parameters have been obtained, which have been analyzed in univariate models and used to adjust the statistical model that analyzed the relationship between drug exposures and suicide risk. Different groups of psychotropic drugs have been studied, with an emphasis on antidepressant subtypes, as well as cholesterol-lowering drugs, antihypertensive drugs, and other drugs of interest. 971 people out of 2,109 registered in the suicide death registers had interactions with the primary care health system. For these, 19,420 controls were selected. Among the 971 people with some previous healthcare contact, 33% and 58.5% died during the week or the month following system interaction, respectively. After adjusting for other non-pharmacological risk factors, the antecedent of any exposure to either antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants, anxiolytics and hypnosedatives, antiepileptics or opioids was associated with a significant increase in the risk of suicide, with moderate risk estimators, between 1.47 and 2.29. Those patients with exposures to antiepileptic drugs, antipsychotics, opioids and antidepressants who did not have any dispensation of these drugs in the last three months had higher risks. None of the non-psychiatric drugs analyzed have shown consistent patterns of substantial increases in risk. Based on these results, the hypothesis has been confirmed that certain clinical factors, especially mental health and health frequentation, and the exposure to certain drugs active on the nervous system, are associated with an increased risk of suicide. The availability of data in primary care electronic medical records represents an opportunity to create risk detection tools in the electronic medical record that may allow the indication of preventive actions and individualized follow-up.

Date of Award	22 Jan 2021
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Caridad Pontes Garcia (Director) & Victor Perez Sola (Director)