Articles related to ANTIDEPRESSANTS

Patients discontinuing antidepressant therapy experience insomnia, flu-like symptoms, mood disturbances, dizziness, and paresthesias — among a broad array of adverse effects. Those symptoms can last for days to months. This narrative review describes the array of discontinuation symptoms and their causes and provides practical clinical guidance for discontinuing antidepressants to minimize the risk of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome (ADS).

In the phase III trial for zuranolone, 67.4% of patients who received an initial 2-week course at the 30-mg dose level initially achieved a 50% or greater reduction from baseline on the HAMD-17. Over the following year, half of those patients required additional 2-week courses of therapy. Of the group who received the 50-mg dose, only 25% needed subsequent courses.

Study: This meta-analysis includes 232 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of drug monotherapy for major depressive disorder submitted to the FDA between 1979 and 2016, and comprises nearly 75,000 adult and child participants. Conclusion: Patients with depression are likely to improve substantially from acute treatment of their depression with drug or placebo. Although the mean effect of antidepressants is only a small improvement over placebo, the effect of active drug seems to increase the probability that any patient will benefit substantially from treatment by about 15%.

The idea that depression is brought on by decreased serotonin activity or concentrations is unsupported, according to the authors of a systematic umbrella review, who also challenge the rationale behind the high rates of antidepressant prescription. They claim that certain medical professionals continue to promote the incorrect chemical imbalance explanation of depression, and the public as a whole still accepts it. However, other medical professionals argue that antidepressants continue to be a helpful treatment option for patients in addition to other methods like talking therapy and that the idea that depression is caused by a straightforward chemical imbalance is outdated in any case.

Selecting effective antidepressants for the treatment of major depressive disorder is an imprecise practice. With remission rates of about 30% after the initial therapy selection, there is a need to uncover biomarkers able to predict treatment response. This study looked at pharmacogenomic testing for drug-gene interactions to guide treatment selection. Unfortunately, they did not find significantly improved outcomes.

In this 30-minute, 0.50 credit CME activity, participants will be better able to define treatment response, remission and treatment resistance in MDD; identify patients with inadequate response to antidepressants who may benefit from treatment modification; select an appropriate next-step treatment strategy for a patient with partial response to an antidepressant; and compare pharmacologic and adverse effect profiles of SGAs approved for adjunctive treatment of MDD.