Posted by pseudoname on April 19, 2006, at 16:24:19
In an article put up yesterday at Slate called “Comparing Antidepressants”, author Sarah E Richards orginally wrote:
<snip>
Thanks to a flurry of research since the approval of Prozac in 1987, there are now 20 antidepressants (or "selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors") to choose from.
<snip>I emailed her today, pointing out what was surely just a typo on her part. I said
“Did you mis-write? ‘Antidepressant’ and ‘SSRI’ are not synonyms, as you know. There are far more than 20 drugs used by physicians as antidepressants, but only 20 are FDA-approved to be *marketed* as antidepressants, and of those, only about 14 are SSRIs or SNRIs. Others include trycyclics and MAOIs.”
Richards quickly replied, and the sentence was changed to:
<snip>
...there are now 20 antidepressants (many of them "selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors"*) to choose from.
<snip>And this footnote was added to the page: “*Correction, April 19, 2006: The original sentence implied that all 20 antidepressants affect serotonin levels. While many of them do, a few drugs work through other mechanisms.”
Actually, it flatly said antidepressants = SSRIs. The fact that TCAs & MAOIs also involve serotonin is irrelevant. But more importantly to me than that deception, she still didn't say that she's defining ‘antidepressant’ as “one of the 20 drugs FDA-approved to be MARKETED for depression treatment.” I think that's very misleading. Buprenorphine (for example) *is* an antidepressant and is sometimes prescribed that way in the U.S., but it can only be marketed in the U.S. for pain or addiction treatment.
She's entitled to define ‘AD’ any way she wants, but she should at least be clear with readers what standard she's using. People will read this and think the category is cut-&-dried or that no other drugs are available.
The corrected article is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2140187/
poster:pseudoname
thread:634843
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060417/msgs/634843.html