Posted by Ilene on September 25, 2003, at 21:01:27
In reply to Anyone else troubled by these placebo findings?, posted by loolot on September 23, 2003, at 10:57:59
> I have seena lot about this placebo study lately, and I have to say, I think there must be some holes in this theory. I just cant believe that a placebo would do the same as wellbutrin or prozac. Did they study these patients long term??
> Just what we need, a community telling us this is all in our heads againAFAIK, drug company clinical trials for ADs use patients who are treatment-naive; in other words, they've never taken meds. For obvious reasons they can't use suicidal patients in a double-blind trial. While depression is common, many people have a first and possibly only episode of depression as adults. It often goes away by itself. Those are the people who get enrolled in the trials used for FDA approval. So you have a population of mildly to moderately depressed people who are likely to get better anyway.
People who have had depressions since childhood or adolescence (or just been depressed all the time), who have had more than one episode, or are treatment resistant are *not* the people in those trials.
If you've had a med poop out, or failed to respond to a couple of them, then you are not going to experience a placebo effect. The first AD I took, desipramine, worked for 2 years, until I went off it when I was trying for a 2nd child. It didn't work when I went on it again, so my pdoc switched me to prozac, which worked for a few years. I've been through several ADs since then, with worse and worse results. So I know they work, but they have limitations.
Ilene
poster:Ilene
thread:262425
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030923/msgs/263343.html