ArticleJournal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)2026
The impact of antidepressant use on MDMA fatalities: A matched case-control study using a post-mortem database.
Article in Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
background3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is being investigated as a new therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With antidepressants as the first-line pharmacotherapy for PTSD, it is important to understand any drug-drug interactions between antidepressants and MDMA. This study aimed to investigate the association between antidepressant use and MDMA fatality using a drug-death database.
methodsA retrospective case-control study was performed using a dataset from the National Programme on Substance Use Mortality. Deaths reported between 1997 and May 2023 were extracted. Cases were defined as deaths with MDMA detected and were age- and sex-matched to controls, defined as deaths with no MDMA detected. Cases were analysed by post-mortem (PM) detection of antidepressants and prescription of antidepressants. Conditional logistic regression was performed, adjusted for confounders (polysubstance use and intentionality of death).
resultsA total of 1328 cases and 5312 matched controls for the PM analysis and 840 cases and 3360 matched controls for the prescribed analysis were included. In the PM analysis, after adjusting for potential confounders, antidepressant use was less likely in MDMA fatalities compared to other drug-related deaths (adjusted OR [aOR] 0.595 [95% Confidence interval (CI) 0.491-0.722]). In the prescribed analysis, there was no significant association between the prescription of antidepressants and MDMA fatalities (aOR 0.838 [95% CI 0.688-1.021]).
conclusionsAn inverse association was found between antidepressant use and MDMA fatality in this retrospective case-control study using a drug-death database.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.