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Background: Depression and treatment with antidepressant medication is common in patients with malignant glioma. However, the extent to which antidepressants may affect the disease is not fully understood. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate possible associations between treatment with antidepressant medication and survival in glioma patients.

Methods: We performed a registry-based cohort study including 1231 patients with malignant glioma (WHO grade 2, 3 and 4) having undergone surgery, and 6400 matched controls without glioma. All data was extracted from the RISK North database, which contains information from multiple national population-based registries in Sweden.

Results: Treatment with antidepressants is more common in patients with malignant glioma (27%), compared to controls (16%), p<.001. Treatment with antidepressants after surgery for glioma was significantly associated with poorer survival. These effects were observed both for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and non-SSRIs. In grade 4 glioma, SSRI treatment was associated with a HR of 3.32 (95% CI 2.69–4.10, p<.001), and non-SSRI treatment a HR of 3.54 (95% CI 2.52–4.99, p<.001), compared to glioma patients without antidepressants. In grade 2-3 glioma, the HR for SSRI treatment was 3.26 (95% CI 2.19–4.85, p<.001), and for non-SSRI treatment 7.71 (95% CI 4.22-14.12, p<.001).

Conclusions: Our results demonstrate a negative association between antidepressant medication and survival in glioma. Further research will be needed to clarify causation.