Depression drugs study divides experts
A new study by Anglo-American researchers on the value of well-known anti-depressants has found that they work only for the most severely depressed patients but the findings have been criticised by Australian experts.
The new analysis, published in the US journal Public Library of Science Medicine, was based on 35 studies lodged with the US Food and Drug Administration by the drug makers and included best-selling drugs such as Prozac, Aropax, and Effexor.
It was also claimed that even part of the benefit seen in very depressed patients arose from the patients having a reduced response to the placebo – the term for dummy pills against which trial drugs are usually compared – rather than an increased response to the antidepressant.
However, Gordon Parker, director of the Black Dog Institute and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of NSW, said that the patients in the study “bear very little correlation to the people we see in real-life clinical practice”. He said that participants in trials of antidepressants were usually hospital outpatients rather than admitted patients, and they were not suicidal and did not have drug or alcohol problems.
Professor Parker said that patients with melancholic depression were “often in a very dark place” and were rarely involved in clinical trials. But 65% to 70% of these patients responded to antidepressants whereas only 10% to 15% improved after taking the placebo.
