Posted by SLS on July 21, 2005, at 20:54:42
In reply to Re: About my post..and Suicide..., posted by linkadge on July 21, 2005, at 20:46:34
> "One of the most important findings of such studies is that the dosage of an antidepressant that successfully treats the depression acutely is the same dosage that should be used for long-term maintenance. "
>
> That is what was claimed for benzodiazapines 30 years ago.
>
> That again is buying into the whole flawed theory. What doctors claim of the drug, and what the drug actually turns out to be, are two totally different things.
Work in this area is not new:1: J Affect Disord. 1993 Mar;27(3):139-45. Related Articles, Links
Comparison of full-dose versus half-dose pharmacotherapy in the maintenance treatment of recurrent depression.Frank E, Kupfer DJ, Perel JM, Cornes C, Mallinger AG, Thase ME, McEachran AB, Grochocinski VJ.
Department of Psychiatry University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, PA 15213.
Recent evidence points to the prophylactic efficacy of maintaining recurrent unipolar patients on the same dose of antidepressant medication that was used to treat the acute episode (Frank et al., 1990; Kupfer et al., 1992). Therefore, the question of whether such patients should be tapered to a lower maintenance dose after successful resolution of an acute episode is clearly important. In this report we describe a small randomized clinical trial in which patients were assigned to either full-dose or half-dose maintenance treatment for a period of 3 years. Survival analysis suggests that superior prophylaxis can be achieved with a full-dose as compared to a half-dose maintenance treatment strategy (p < 0.07). Mean survival time for the full-dose subjects was 135.17 (SE 19.75) weeks as compared to 74.94 (SE 19.78) weeks (median of 43.1 weeks) for the half-dose subjects. We conclude that for patients who have suffered several recurrences, full-dose maintenance treatment is the more effective prophylactic strategy.
Publication Types:
Clinical Trial
Randomized Controlled TrialPMID: 8478502 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:530123
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050718/msgs/531175.html