Trends in the consumption of antidepressant drugs before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Canary Islands, Spain: The case of the province of Las Palmas.
Date
2023Abstract
The use of antidepressants (ADs) has increased significantly as a result of COVID-19 and its consequences. However, there are some notable differences in the relative levels of use between geographical areas and population groups. The aim of this work is to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the consumption of ADs in the Canary Islands, focusing on the islands of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, by analyzing the trends in prescriptions of ADs during the pandemic period (2020) compared to the pre-pandemic period (2016–2020). Data were extracted from the community pharmacy wholesaler at a population level. Consumption patterns are expressed as the number of defined daily doses per 1000 inhabitant/day. The overall consumption of DIDs was higher in Gran Canaria, mainly in urban areas and the capital. It was similar in both Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, but particularly localized in the capital, which are considered semi-urban areas. Lanzarote and Fuerteventura present the same pattern of prescription ADs use, whereas Gran Canaria Citation: Moreno, V.; Dévora, S.; Abdala-Kuri, S.; Oliva, A. Trends in the Consumption of Antidepressant Drugs before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Canary Islands, Spain: The Case of the Province of Las Palmas. Healthcare 2023, 11, 1425. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/healthcare11101425 Academic Editor: Gerald Zernig Received: 23 April 2023 Revised: 6 May 2023 Accepted: 8 May 2023 Published: 15 May 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). is notably different. This finding was also observed in the more consumed active pharmaceutical ingredients, although small inter-island variations in the ranking and percentages were observed. Sertraline and escitalopram are two of the most prescribed N06AB ADs, whereas the most recent N06AXADssuchasvenlafaxine, mirtazapine and desvenlafaxine are more commonly prescribed. These differences in prescription ADs can be explained by demographical characteristics, population size, the fact of living in an urban area and general medical practice. In this context, the COVID-19 pandemic did not have an impact on the overall trend of the use of ADs between 2016 and 2020 in the islands under study.