Contacts:
Sarah Goodwin

Kathi Ovnic
Holly Korschun
June 15, 1999
STILL ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT IN ANTIDEPRESSANTS, EVEN AMONG NEW MOOD LIFTERS

Even among the new classes of antidepressants, "approximately 20-40 percent of patients are treatment resistant or do not respond at all, depending on the definition of response," said Emory University's Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., in the lecture he delivered on "Problems with Currently Available Antidepressants" at this month's American Psychiatric Association meeting in Washington, D.C.

"The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the mixed reuptake inhibitors (venlafaxine) and the selective receptor antagonists (nefazodone and mirtazapine) all represent clear advances over the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and the monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)," said Dr. Nemeroff, in terms of a greatly improved therapeutic index and side-effect profile. "The efficacy of these newer agents is considered equal to the TCAs, although there is some controversy on this matter."

Sexual dysfunction, sedation, headache and persistent sleep disturbances are not infrequently associated with the newer drugs. Further reducing these troubling side effects would improve patient compliance, as would speeding up the drugs' onset of action, says Dr. Nemeroff, who is chairman and Reunette W. Harris Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine, editor-in-chief of the journal Depression and author of "The Neurobiology of Depression," published in Scientific American (June 8, 1998).