Antidepressant Treatment in Huntington’s Disease: Regional and Case-Control Variation

Abstract Objectives Determine differences in frequency and choice of antidepressant for anxiety and depression between pwHD and controls. Determine if regional variation affects antidepressant prescribing between pwHD and controls. Methods We used data from the observational cohort study ENROLL-HD. Clinical assessments and medication are recorded annually for 19540 pwHD and 6010 controls. We determined an episode of depression and anxiety as >1 for both severity and frequency Problem Behaviours Assessment(PBAs) depressed mood item and anxiety item respectively. We classed antidepressants as SSRI, SNRI, TCA, Unique, TeCA (tetracyclic antidepressant), NDRI (noradrenaline – dopamine reuptake inhibitor), phenylpiperazine. We used logistic models to determine the effect of case status on probability of antidepressant treatment and multinomial models to determine the effect of region and case status on antidepressant class. Results We found that rates of both depression(46.06% vs 32.42%) and anxiety(50.23% vs 37.47%) were higher in pwHD than controls. Even accounting for severity, pwHD were significantly more likely to receive an antidepressant than controls for both depression(OR 3.48,p<2×10−16) and anxiety(OR 4.34,p<2×10−16). Accounting for regional variation, pwHD were more likely than controls to receive a TeCA for depression(OR 2.1,p=1.2×10−7) or anxiety(OR 4.2,p=0.00025); and less likely to receive an NDRI for depression than controls(OR 0.78,p=0.022). There was substantial regional variation in antidepressant class selection for pwHD. Conclusions Anxiety and Depression are treated differently in pwHD and controls: the lack of an evidence base to justify this underscores the need for a clinical trial of antidepressants for depression and anxiety in pwHD.