The antidepressant citalopram (Celexa) appears to be a safe and effective treatment for anxiety disorders in older patients, a small trial suggests.

“Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in elderly persons,” Dr. Eric J. Lenze of University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania, and colleagues point out in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Celexa is one of the newer types of antidepressant drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. These drugs “are clearly efficacious for anxiety disorders in younger adults,” Lenze’s group notes. However, whether this applies to the elderly “has not been established.”

The team looked into this question in a study involving 34 patients at least 60 years of age who had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The participants were randomly assigned to treatment with citalopram or an inactive placebo for 8 weeks.

Twenty-eight of the patients completed the study. An improvement of at least 50 percent on a standard anxiety rating scale was seen in 11 citalopram-treated patients and 4 placebo-treated patients, the researchers report.

No significant differences were observed between the two groups in the rate of side effects. The most common complaints were dry mouth, nausea and fatigue.

While the researchers say the findings need to be replicated in a larger group, they conclude that the results suggest that “as in younger people, SSRIs are efficacious and well tolerated in the treatment of anxiety disorders in elderly persons.”

Celexa is made by Forest Pharmaceuticals, which provided a grant for the study along with the National Institute of Mental Health.

SOURCE: American Journal of Psychiatry, January 2005.