‘Antidepressants could relieve chronic dizziness’

The Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) said Monday that its researchers have discovered that antidepressants may relieve chronic dizziness.

A group of SNUBH researchers, led by Professors Park Hye-yeon (left) and Kim Ji-soo, has discovered that antidepressants can help treat persistent postural-perceptual dizziness.

“Most dizziness appears as a temporary symptom, and patients often ignore the symptoms because it subsides,” the hospital said. “However, if the symptoms repeat, patients must find the cause of the dizziness and receive appropriate treatment.”

The hospital stressed that while there are many different causes of dizziness, the most common cause is an abnormality in the vestibular organ responsible for the balance of our body, such as otolithiasis and vestibular neuritis. Dizziness is a common symptom in daily life, affecting about 30 percent of the global population.

“In most cases, dizziness appears temporarily and disappears, and hospitals can easily treat them through otolaryngeal surgery, drug treatment, or rehabilitation training,” the hospital said. “However, if there is no abnormality in the function of the vestibular organs of the ear or brain and chronic dizziness appears for more than three months, the patient may be suffering from persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD).”

Patients with PPPD may aggravate their symptoms through exposure to complex visual stimuli, mainly when standing or moving.

In such a case, various tests do not show any obvious abnormalities, despite the patient often suffering from the constant experience of various dizziness symptoms, such as floating or falling off and postural anxiety.

“While PPPD treatment includes vestibular rehabilitation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and drug therapy, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which is an antidepressant, may be particularly recommended,” the hospital said. “Despite the recommendation, there is still insufficient data on the mechanism of the therapeutic effect of antidepressants for chronic dizziness.”

Against such a backdrop, the team, led by Professor Park Hye-yeon of the Department of Mental Health and Professor Kim Ji-soo of the Department of Neurology, reported a study that confirmed the therapeutic effect of serotonin's therapeutic effect reuptake inhibitors and therapeutic response predictors in PPPD.

The research team conducted a retrospective study to analyze the treatment effect and related predictors of 197 patients diagnosed with PPPD and treated with serotonin reuptake inhibitors from 2016 to 2019 at SNUBH.

After analyzing the patients who received antidepressant treatment for 12 weeks, the team confirmed that 65 percent of the patients showed improvement in dizziness, and the treatment effect was better in women than in men.

Also, the team confirmed that the treatment effect was more effective in patients with severe dizziness.

“Through the results of this study, the team was able to confirm that in the case of PPPD, hospitals can alleviate the symptoms with low-dose antidepressant treatment alone,” Professor Park said. “Notably, as we confirmed that the treatment effect may differ depending on gender, age, severity, disease history, and level of anxiety, the team was able to confirm once again the necessity and excellence of a multidisciplinary treatment system tailored to the patient in the treatment of dizziness.”

The study was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Neurology.