Researchers
find placebos work just as
well in many patients
WASHINGTON
- Antidepressant
medications appear to help
only very severely
depressed people and work
no better than placebos in
many patients, British
researchers said.
Researchers
led by Irving Kirsch of
the University of Hull
reviewed a series of
studies, both published
and unpublished, on four
antidepressants, examining
the question of whether a
person's response to these
drugs hinged on how
depressed they were before
getting treatment.
They
were Eli Lilly and Co.'s
Prozac, also known as
fluoxetine, Wyeth's
Effexor, also called
venlafaxine;
GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil,
also called Seroxat or
paroxetine, and
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's
drug Serzone, also called
nefazodone, which it no
longer markets in the
United States.
,,,
The researchers
obtained data on all the
clinical trials submitted
to the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration for the
licensing of the four
drugs.
"Although
patients get better when
they take antidepressants,
they also get better when
they take a placebo, and
the difference in
improvement is not very
great. This means that
depressed people can
improve without chemical
treatments," Kirsch
said in a statement.
Prozac,
used by 40m people, does not
work say scientists
A
single Prozac capsule.
Prozac,
the bestselling
antidepressant taken by 40
million people worldwide,
does not work and nor do
similar drugs in the same
class, according to a
major review released
today.
The
study examined all available
data on the drugs, including
results from clinical trials
that the manufacturers chose
not to publish at the time.
The trials compared the
effect on patients taking
the drugs with those given a
placebo or sugar pill.
... "Given
these results, there seems
little reason to prescribe
antidepressant medication to
any but the most severely
depressed patients, unless
alternative treatments have
failed," says Kirsch.
"This study raises
serious issues that need to
be addressed surrounding
drug licensing and how drug
trial data is
reported."
The
paper, published today in
the journal PLoS (Public
Library of Science)
Medicine, is likely to have
a significant impact on the
prescribing of the drugs.
The National Institute for
Health and Clinical
Excellence (Nice) already
recommends that counselling
should be tried before
doctors prescribe
antidepressants. Kirsch, who
was one of the consultants
for the guidelines, says the
new analysis "would
suggest that the
prescription of
antidepressant medications
might be restricted even
more".
The
review breaks new ground
because Kirsch and his
colleagues have obtained for
the first time what they
believe is a full set of
trial data for four
antidepressants.
They
requested the full data
under freedom of information
rules from the Food and Drug
Administration, which
licenses medicines in the US
and requires all data when
it makes a decision.
More
here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/26/mentalhealth.medicalresearch
