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A potentially deadly drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been linked to the deaths of soldiers returning from war. Yet the FDA continues to approve it. Sgt. Eric Layne's death was not pretty. A few months after being prescribed a drug cocktail with the antidepressant Paxil, the mood stabilizer Klonopin and AstraZeneca's controversial antipsychotic drug Seroquel, the Iraq war veteran was "suffering from incontinence, severe depression [and] continuous headaches," according to his widow, Janette Layne, at FDA hearings for new Seroquel approvals last year. Soon he had tremors. " ... [H]is breathing was labored [and] he had developed sleep...

The efficacy of antidepressant treatment over placebo for major depressive disorder “varies considerably,” depending upon symptom severity, according to a meta-analysis. Only patients whose depression is classified as “very severe” appear to have a greater benefit from antidepressants than from placebo pills, according to the study by Jay C. Fournier of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and his colleagues (JAMA 2010;303:47–53). Most placebo-controlled studies of antidepressants specifically exclude individuals who score below 23 on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS). HDRS scores of 8–13 indicate mild depression, scores of 14–18 indicate moderate depression, scores of 19–22 indicate severe depression, and...

Last week, The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study questioning the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs. The drugs are useful in cases of severe depression, it said. But for most patients, those with mild to moderate cases, the most commonly used antidepressants are generally no better than a placebo. For the millions of people who take these drugs, and the doctors who prescribe them, this provocative claim had to be confusing, if not alarming. It contradicted literally hundreds of well-designed trials, not to mention considerable clinical experience, showing antidepressants to be effective for a wide array of depressed...

Northwestern research finds drugs aim at wrong target CHICAGO --- More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. Why? Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The medications are like arrows shot at the outer rings of a bull's eye instead of the center. A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher Eva Redei, presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week, appears to topple two strongly held...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found. "Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry. "Not...

Recently, I was watching a TV commercial for a self-proclaimed breakthrough drug I was encouraged to “ask my doctor about.” As I was watching the ad all I could think about was how difficult it must be to produce an appealing promotion for a product that has so many devastating side effects. You’d have to be a marketing genius to peddle some of these drugs. One “pharmaceutical therapy” that aims to help people with insomnia sleep better at night, for example, comes with a laundry list of possible side effects, including but not limited to hives, difficulty breathing, swelling of...

A few months ago I read a blog post by Heather Anderson AKA Dooce. Heather is considered an expert on post partum depression and motherhood. She is also a liberal ex-mormon – sort of the anti-Jenny Hatch. She regularly stands against just about everything that is important to me. I found that she was an articulate, smutty, sometimes funny but mean spirited blogger. And that those who tended to comment on her blog also used tons of profanity and were hostile to my LDS religion. I was intrigued by the amount of conversation going on about Antidepressants. (Links and Videos...

Such sexual symptoms have long been known side effects of the popular Prozac class of antidepressants, but a growing body of research suggests that they are far more common than previously thought, perhaps affecting half or more of patients. And a handful of recent medical and psychological journal articles document a small number of cases in which sexual problems remain even after a patient goes off the drugs. "This is such an upsetting issue," said Aline Zoldbrod, a Lexington psychologist and sex therapist. "There are people for whom SSRIs are really life-saving, I think, but the idea that someone would...

Viagra helps women taking antidepressants overcome the sexual dysfunction that can be a side effect of taking the medication, new research says. Researchers from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine found that women who took the erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil, a.k.a Viagra, had an improvement in sexual function in contrast to women who took a placebo. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers said this is the first randomized controlled trial showing that there is a treatment for the sexual dysfunction that women experience as a result of taking antidepressants. According...

Coroner officials released an autopsy report Friday suggesting that a slain Roosevelt High School sophomore who attacked a campus police officer was not taking proper dosages of drugs prescribed to control his mental illness. Dr. David Hadden, Fresno County coroner, said it's clear that Jesus "Jesse" Carrizales, 17, had a high dose of the antidepressant Lexapro in his blood that could have caused him to be paranoid. But the teen's blood also revealed he was not taking antipsychotic drugs. Carrizales' family has said he was taking Lexapro and Geodon, an antipsychotic medication, for depression. Hadden said it's far too early...

“I’ve grown up on medication,” my patient Julie told me recently. “I don’t have a sense of who I really am without it.” At 31, she had been on one antidepressant or another nearly continuously since she was 14. There was little question that she had very serious depression and had survived several suicide attempts. In fact, she credited the medication with saving her life. But now she was raising an equally fundamental question: how the drugs might have affected her psychological development and core identity. It was not an issue I had seriously considered before. Most of my patients,...

The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. How did a once rare condition become so common? I am thinking of the Medicated Americans, those 11 percent of women and 5 percent of men who are taking antidepressants. It is Sunday night. The Medicated American—let’s call her Julie, and let’s place her in Winterset, Iowa—is getting ready for bed. Monday morning and its attendant pressures—the rush to get out of the house, the long commute, the bustle of the office—loom. She opens the...

Despite recent bad publicity over withheld studies showing marginal results, the resume of America's arsenal of antidepressants is enviable: consort to celebrities, subject of best-selling books and tabloid headlines. They may be the most celebrated pills since Valium. Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro, among others, have become both household words and medicine-cabinet staples. Known collectively as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, these antidepressants are prescribed for anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and numerous conditions besides depression. SSRIs are now the most commonly prescribed of all medications in this country. The rate at which physicians prescribed SSRIs more than...

Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy Sweeping Overview Suggests Suppression of Negative Data Has Distorted View of Drugs By DAVID ARMSTRONG and KEITH J. WINSTEIN January 17, 2008; Page D1 The effectiveness of a dozen popular antidepressants has been exaggerated by selective publication of favorable results, according to a review of unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE As a result, doctors and patients are getting a distorted view of how well blockbuster antidepressants like Wyeth's Effexor and Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft really work, researchers asserted in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. Since the overwhelming...

Numerous unpublished studies submitted to the Food and Drug Administration by pharmaceutical companies have found that many popular antidepressants have little or no effect on patients, according to a new review of the previously hidden findings. A total of 74 studies involving a dozen anti-depressants and 12,564 patients were registered with the FDA from 1987 through 2004. The FDA deemed 38 of the studies to be positive. All but one of those studies was published, the researchers said. The other 36 were found to have negative or questionable results by the FDA. Most of those studies -- 22 out of...

OMAHA, Neb. -- The shooter at Westroads Mall was identified as Robert A. Hawkins of Bellevue, according to the Sarpy County Sheriff's Department, and a suicide note said he was going to be famous. Hawkins, 19, had been arrested on a couple of misdemeanors in November and was due in court this month. One charge included minor in possession of alcohol. He was arrested on Nov. 24. He was due in court for an arraignment on Dec. 19. Sarpy County deputies said they are getting a warrant to search Hawkins' home in the Quail Creek neighborhood in Bellevue. The woman...

A Columbine-type massacre tragically went down at a school in Finland the other day, leaving eight dead plus the shooter. According to AHRP, there's evidence that the young shooter was on SSRIs and that they made him "aggressive," a well-documented but often overlooked problem with these drugs. AHRP reports that, although Finnish press accounts include the SSRI information, the possible SSRI connection was stripped from British and American press accounts of the shooting. Now, if the shooter had been drunk or stoned or diagnosed with schizophrenia, they would have included that information, so why would they trim out mentions of...

Last week, leading psychiatric researchers linked a 2004 increase in the suicide rate for children and adolescents to a warning by the Food and Drug Administration about the use of antidepressants in minors. The F.D.A. warning, the researchers suggested, might have resulted in severely depressed teenagers going without needed treatment. But the data in the study, which was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry and received widespread publicity, do not support that explanation, outside experts say. While suicide rates for Americans ages 19 and under rose 14 percent in 2004, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants in that group...

Two large new studies in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggest that treatment of depression, either with psychotherapy or drugs, reduces the risk of suicide attempts in all age groups, especially during the first months of treatment. The findings raise further questions about possible links between antidepressant drugs and suicide. In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration, faced with evidence from controlled studies, mandated a “black box” notification on all antidepressant drugs, warning that their use in children and adolescents could increase the risk of suicide. In May, after reviewing controlled data from all age groups, the F.D.A. required an...