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Trintellix may improve sleep quality in patients with depression, insomnia

Preliminary study results reported the beneficial effect of treatment with Trintellix on subjective sleep and daytime sleepiness in patients with insomnia and major depressive disorder.

“Treating insomnia comorbid with depression may be challenging considering that many antidepressant medications can adversely affect sleep quality and continuity,” Claudio Liguori, MD, from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and colleagues wrote in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. “Although the efficacy and safety of [vortioxetine] treatment have been already demonstrated on depressive symptoms in trials comparing this drug vs. placebo, no studies investigated the effect of [vortioxetine] on sleep in depressed patients.”

In this retrospective analysis, researchers examined the effect of vortioxetine (Trintellix, Takeda/Lundbeck) on sleep quality, daytime sleepiness and depressive symptoms in 15 patients with major depression and insomnia.

Participants who started vortioxetine treatment for their depressive symptoms completed questionnaires — including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) — at baseline and after 6 months of treatment. The investigators used the paired Wilcoxon test to determine the effectiveness of treatment.

Sleep quality and disturbances, as measured by the PSQI total score, significantly improved between baseline and follow-up after controlling for age and time from symptom onset (P < .01). There were also significant reductions in several sub-items related to sleep quality and continuity.

Daytime sleepiness, as measured by the ESS, also decreased between follow-up and baseline (P < .01). Analysis also revealed that depressive symptoms, as measured by BDI, decreased between follow-up and baseline (P < .01). When the researchers examined the change in sleep during depressive symptoms, they also observed a significant drop in the score over the study period (P < .01).

“Considering that sleep impairment is a frequent comorbid symptom in patients affected by MDD, we suggest the possible use of [vortioxetine] for treating depressive symptoms and improving sleep quality in patients showing comorbid depression and insomnia,” Liguori and colleagues wrote. “However, future studies investigating sleep by using polysomnography, the gold standard tool able to study sleep architecture, are invited in order to confirm this preliminary observation.” – by Savannah Demko

Disclosure: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.