Psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have caught increasing attention. While psychotropic drugs offer great value in managing psychiatric symptoms, their adverse effects engender considerable controversy regarding their use in pediatric patients, let alone in those with T1D. Despite the topic’s high visibility, little evidence exists on the patterns of psychotropic drug use in pediatric T1D patients. We thus conducted this cohort study of 3,720,381 children and adolescents (13,191 [0.36%] had T1D) using several Swedish national registers. We examined the trends and patterns (prescription source and treatment duration) of psychotropic drug use and estimated the risk of initiating psychotropic drugs after T1D onset. We found that psychotropic drug use increased significantly in children and adolescents with T1D from 2006 to 2019 (Figure 1), with ADHD medications, SSRI, hypnotics and anxiolytics among the most used ones. The primary prescription source was psychiatric care, and treatment durations were mostly <12 months (except for ADHD medications). Children and adolescents with newly-onset T1D had a higher risk of initiating any psychotropic drug (hazard ratio 1.29, 95%CI 1.20-1.38) than their peers without T1D. Our findings highlight the need for risk/benefit studies of psychotropic drugs among young users with T1D to inform future research and guideline development.
S.Liu: None. T.Lagerberg: None. J.F.Ludvigsson: Research Support; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., MSD Life Science Foundation. M.Taylor: None. B.Donofrio: None. P.Lichtenstein: None. S.Gudbjörnsdottir: None. A.Butwicka: None.
Swedish Research Council (2017-00788)