Antidepressants: Overmarketed and over prescribed?

Jan/18/2008 06:19 Filed in: Pharma Business
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Prozac is probably the best known antidepressant in the world and did a lot to move depression from an overlooked disease to a mainstream disease. However, 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. Yeah, I trust the pharma companies with data....NOT !



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 But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but by a modest margin, concludes the new report, which appears Thursday in The New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.


“This is a very important study for two reasons,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, editor in chief of The New England Journal. “One is that when you prescribe drugs, you want to make sure you’re working with best data possible; you wouldn’t buy a stock if you only knew a third of the truth about it.”




One only has to go to the Cafe Pharma board and read stories about how people who are using Cymbalta are having a hell of time getting off the drug. When you stop taking the product it can cause dizziness and make you feel lightheaded. Despite Lilly's best marketing efforts Cymbalta has never reached the sales level of its predecessor Prozac probably because more insurers are prescribing generic Prozac rather than the expensive Cymbalta. In fact some are even questioning Lilly's marketing campaign of "depression and pain" for Cymbalta. Of course the phara industry would never hide data.....and there is a tooth fairy.
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