Posted by Garnet71 on May 12, 2009, at 11:02:18
In reply to Antidepressants Hardly Help ( Time Magazine), posted by rvanson on May 10, 2009, at 23:31:50
I have come across a few study of studies. This article points to studies conducted by the drug companies themselves--studies that showed ADs were not much more effective than placebos (and leaving the political Kirsch guy out of it).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/health/17depress.html?_r=1
The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.
In published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but by a modest margin, concludes the new report, which appears Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Previous research had found a similar bias toward reporting positive results for a variety of medications; and many researchers have questioned the reported effectiveness of antidepressants. But the new analysis, reviewing data from 74 trials involving 12 drugs, is the most thorough to date. And it documents a large difference: while 94 percent of the positive studies found their way into print, just 14 percent of those with disappointing or uncertain results did....
poster:Garnet71
thread:895119
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090505/msgs/895346.html