Posts Tagged ‘imipramine’

Lawyers & Settlements—Mom Alert: Would you want a 68% Higher Risk of Miscarriage? (Antidepressants & Pregnancy study)

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Lawyers & Settlements
By LucyC
June 2, 2010

A new study out yesterday—June 1, 2010—has revealed a higher rate of miscarriages in women who were taking antidepressants during pregnancy. How much higher? Sixty-eight percent—yes —that’s 68%—higher. Frankly, that is nothing short of shocking.

Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the study was done in Canada through the University of Montreal. FYI—This was no small study either—the investigators used data from 5,124 women who are part of a large, population-based study of pregnant women who had clinically verified miscarriages, and a large sample of women from the same registry who did not have a miscarriage. Among the women who miscarried, 284 or 5.5 percent, had taken antidepressants during their pregnancy.

In fact the findings are so robust that the physicians who did the study are suggesting that this is a class effect—in other words the effect could be attributed to all selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—or SSRIs. Here’s what’s being reported in the press:

“These results, which suggest an overall class effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are highly robust given the large number of users studied,” the study’s senior author, Dr. Anick Berard, said in a statement. (UPI.com)

The antidepressants that showed a particular association with miscarriage in the study were paroxetine (trade names: Seroxat and Paxil) and venlafaxine (trade names: Effexor, Efexor, Alventa, Argofan, Trevilor). The investigators also found that the risk of miscarriage doubled with a combination of different antidepressants.

Just for the record, the antidepressants “investigated” in the University of Montreal study are serotonin reuptake inhibitors (citalopram, fluoxetine, fluvoxa-mine, paroxetine and sertraline); tricyclic antidepressants (ami-triptyline, clomipramine, desipramine, doxepin, imipramine, nortriptyline, trimipramine), serotonin– norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (venlafaxine) and “other antidepressants” (serotonin modulators, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, tetracyclic piperazino-azepines, and dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors).

This study is just the latest to show an association between, well, for lack of a better term let’s say “serious adverse events” and SSRIs and SNRIs in particular.

Read entire article:  http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/blog/mom-alert-would-you-want-a-68-higher-risk-of-miscarriage-03819.html

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Antidepressant no more effective than sugar pills in treating depression

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Andrew Stern
Reuters
January 5, 2010

Mild to severe depression might be better treated with alternatives to antidepressant drugs, which do not help patients much more than an inactive placebo, researchers said Tuesday.

Combining data from six studies that examined the effectiveness of two commonly prescribed antidepressants — paroxetine and imipramine — found the drugs produced benefits only slightly greater than a placebo in patients with mild to severe depression.

“They would have done just as well or just about as well with a placebo,” said Robert DeRubeis, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, who with colleagues performed the meta-analysis.

Paroxetine is one of a popular class of drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and is sold under the brand name Paxil by GlaxoSmithKline. Imipramine is an older tricyclic antidepressant drug developed in the 1950s.

The so-called placebo effect is powerful in treating depression, where people believe they are helped even though they are taking an inactive sugar pill, DeRubeis said.

Read entire article:  http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60454020100106

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