Individuals with bipolar I or II major depression are often misdiagnosed as having unipolar major depression. But a new screening method, testing just three factors, promises to help distinguish between those suffering from bipolar disorder and unipolar major depression.
In the largest ‘real world’ trial ever conducted, a $35 million US government study has concluded that antidepressants cure (or fail to cure) the symptoms of major depression in half of all sufferers, even when individuals are receiving the best possible care. The drugs used in the study, including Celexa, Wellbutrin, Zoloft and Effexor, work in very different ways yet had roughly equal effectiveness when it came to treating depression.
Following elderly individuals with depression for periods of up to two years, a University of Pittsburgh trial found that individuals were less likely to have recurrent depression if they received two years of maintenance therapy with the anti-depressant paroxetine. So-called ‘maintenance psychotherapy’ offered once a month for 45 minutes did not prevent recurrent depression.
Federal regulators in the US have approved the world’s first antidepressant skin patch, the selegiline transdermal patch, to be marketed under the name ‘Emsam’. The drug, first approved in the 1980s to help treat Parkinson’s disease, belongs to a category of less frequently used antidepressants prone to interactions with a substance called tyramine. The antidepressant patch will carry a ‘black box’ warning from the FDA.
A U.S. Senate Finance Committee report says a federal official approved a device to treat persistent depression against the advice of a scientific advisory committee. According to the Senate committee, the official overruled his scientific staff to approve the vagus nerve stimulator device, despite its not having been proved effective against depression in its only clinical trial.
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