Posted by med_empowered on July 16, 2005, at 3:12:29
In reply to cymbalta - only approved for 9 weeks ?, posted by linkadge on July 16, 2005, at 1:14:28
most antidepressants are only tested for a couple months...the initial trials usually run 8 or 9 weeks. Post-marketing studies and studies for "off-label" uses sometimes run longer and report better results, but often arent terribly rigorous. Antipsychotics used for control of bipolar mania are also often approved on the strength of short-term studies (6 weeks seems pretty standard) comparing them to things like haloperidol, lithium, and placebo. Again, after the drugs are approved, more long-term data usually becomes available, although that data is often kind of skewed since many post-marketing studies have small sample sizes (and they usually arent random), often lack a very good double-blind design, are plagued by investigator bias and are often funded by drug companies. But, hey...its what we have to work with. Its also worth noting that the cymbalta study gained some notoriety for some suicides...apparently, at least one young woman, a college-age bible school teacher or something, ended up hanging herself after she landed in the arm of the study that gave full-dose cymbalta to "normal" subjects to test tolerability and addictive potential. Strange.
poster:med_empowered
thread:528415
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050713/msgs/528437.html