Like all medical therapies, antidepressants have several limitations that clinicians should consider when choosing treatments for their patients. [1] Common long-term side effects of antidepressants are weight gain, sexual dysfunction, sleep disturbances, fatigue, apathy, and cognitive impairment. [2] These side effects will influence the quality of life and will be an important factor in determining the compliance to treatment for these patients. [3]

Is to present a study on weight gain in patients treated long term with antidepressants.

Methods: We made a retrospective study of 422 patients with Major Depressive Disorder hospitalized in First Clinic of Psychiatry Tirgu Mures, between Jan/2009 and June/2009. We built the study after patient data on the following criteria: age, sex, place of origin, educational level, occupation, primary diagnosis, BMI at first admission, BMI at the last hospitalization, the average years of treatment, the average hospitalizations and antidepressant treatment applied.

The vast majority of hospitalized patients were females (71%) in the age group 40-49. In summarizing this side effect of antidepressant treatment, we can say that weight gain is significant for long-term treatment with tricyclic antidepresives (64.38% of patients), tetra cyclic (50.30% of patients) and NaSSA (40% of patients). We found an increase of BMI of about 13.5% in these patients. For the patients treated with SSRIs, NDRI and SNRI we found that weight gain was present in less than 40% of patients and this had also influenced the compliance and the adherence to treatment of these patients.