Posted by linkadge on July 16, 2006, at 18:08:54
In reply to Re: couldn't have said it better myself, posted by Klavot on July 16, 2006, at 3:11:35
>Personally I am not interested in the SJW aspect >of the study (since I've never much subscribed >to alternative modalities). Rather, I am >concerned over the apparent sub-placebo efficacy >of Zoloft. The fact remains - and there is no >way to maneuver around this - that the dose of >Zoloft used was relatively low.
Nobody was stopping them from using higher doses. Higher doses do not always equate to higher efficacy.
>I read somewhere - though I cannot back this up
>with any references - that biopsies of the >brains of suicide victims tend to show low >serotonin levels.Some studies show this, some studies don't. There have been studies that show completely normal levels of serotonin biproducts in the suicide victom. There have been inferences too that low serotonin is simply a marker of impulsivity.
>Anyway, this particular study was skewed in >favour of nonsuicidal patients, and as SLS >points out in his cogent analysis of placebo >efficacy, had those patients been included, the >results of the Zoloft arm may well have been >different.
May have. Its easy in hindsight to speculate, but designing a clinical trial to show these drugs are significantly better than placebo is hard.
>Since there are baseline measurements for these >secondary measures, I am not sure that these >measurements were only introduced afterwards. >Your claim that they decided afterwards to >include these measurements to save face is mere >speculation. And again, the fact remains that >Zoloft did outperform placebo on these >measurements, irrespective of any possible >dubious motivations for including these >measurements.
It was my understanding, (I will look for a reference), that the areas in which zoloft performed better than placebo, were selected after the study was done. Ie, we set out to show it was better on these measures, which it wasn't, so we will select the areas which it did perform better on, and pertend as if those measures are the ones that matter.
>It is interesting how, when a study supports the >efficacy of a drug, suddenly issues of collusion >between researchers and pharmaceutical companies >are raised, while when a study such as this one >finds no statistically significant super-placebo >efficacy in terms of full remission, then the >industry involvement of the authors is a >suddenly a non-issue.For starters, the study (at least the one I am referring to) did not support the efficacy of zoloft. The industry involvement is always an issue, thats not the way these trials should be conducted.
>The drug did not "fail". The whole point that I >am making is that the coverage given of this >study in the popular media has been highly >distorted. Furthermore, the points raised above >are based on fact rather than speculation.
I think we are talking about a different study.
This is the one I was thinking of, and yes sertaline did fail in this one.
http://www.herbalgram.org/ogdenpress/herbalgram/articleview.asp?a=2351&p=Y
Linkadge
poster:linkadge
thread:662854
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060709/msgs/667561.html