Posted by SLS on July 15, 2006, at 7:27:24
In reply to Re: couldn't have said it better myself, posted by cecilia on July 15, 2006, at 7:02:43
> You definitely have a more optimistic outlook than me, Scott! You see the glass as half full, the people who did achieve good results. I see the glass as half empty, all the people who went through the different phases of the study and still didn't get any better. And as others have pointed out, since there was no placebo arm we have no idea what percentage of the people with good results were placebo responders. It seems to me that a study with no placebo arm is going to have a much higher percentage of placebo responders than one without, simply because everyone knows for sure they are getting a real drug and have higher expectations. Cecilia
I predict that the percentage of placebo responders in the STAR*D study will be much lower than you will see for any standard clinical antidepressant trial. This is because most of the participants were true MDD sufferers with chronic and recurrent courses. The selection of this patient population included standardized inclusion criteria and rating scales. That the majority of patients achieved complete remission by their third drug trial paints a very optimistic picture for the average sufferer of depression.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:662854
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060709/msgs/667229.html