The drugs do work: antidepressants are effective, study shows

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

The drugs do work: antidepressants are effective, study shows

Doctors hope study will put to rest doubts about the medicine, and help to address global under-treatment of depression

Sarah Boseley Health editor
Wed 21 Feb 2018 23.30 GMT

Antidepressants work – some more effectively than others – in treating depression, according to authors of a groundbreaking study which doctors hope will finally put to rest doubts about the controversial medicine.

Millions more people around the world should be prescribed pills or offered talking therapies, which work equally well for moderate to severe depression, say the doctors, noting that just one in six people receive proper treatment in the rich world – and one in 27 in the developing world.

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The study published in the Lancet took six years, Cipriani said, and included all the published and unpublished data that the scientists could find. It was carried out by a team of international experts. They looked at results after eight weeks of more than 500 trials involving either a drug versus placebo or comparing two different medicines.

The most famous antidepressant of them all, Prozac – now out of patent and known by its generic name, fluoxetine – was one of the least effective but best tolerated, measured by a low drop-out rate in the trials or fewer side-effects reported. The most effective of the drugs was amitriptyline, which was the sixth best tolerated.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/21/the-drugs-do-work-antidepressants-are-effective-study-shows

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Related: Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and network meta-analysis (The Lancet)

[njhoneybadger]

1. Sure they work, that's why they need to come out with new ones every year