Posted by JohnL on March 1, 2000, at 3:25:23
In reply to Reboxetine - Long-Term Success Stories ?, posted by Scott L. Schofield on February 27, 2000, at 9:45:02
Scott,
I saw some interesting data recently. Out of a pool of 250 psychiatric patients during a year who achieved complete wellness with medication, bar graphs were created showing what percentage of certain classes of drugs achieved the complete remission of symptoms. Different bar graphs and statistics were compiled for various psychiatric conditions.
Across the entire spectrum of psychiatric disorders the SSRIs had the highest success percentage, either as monotherapy or as the primary medication in a combination. Depending on the psychiatric condition, the SSRIs accounted for success in 40% to 60% of the cases. The remaining patients achieved total remission with varying percentages of norepinephrine antidepressants, stimulants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, thyroid treatment, or estrogen treatment, or blends of any of these.
What surprised me was that the percentage of patients who responded to norepinephrine antidepressants was the smallest percentage of all. Stimulants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers had a much higher pecentage of success stories than NE antidepressants. I was also surprised to see how useful stimulants actually are, as well as antipsychotics. Based on this one psychiatrist's statistics, these two classes of drugs have a much larger role in treating depression than most physicians realize.
Granted the data is based on just one psychiatrist's experience. But the pool of 250 patients adds validity since anything over 100 is needed for decent statistical relevance. The particular psychiatrist is one who makes sure patients have tried all classes of drugs and have found their favorite within each class. So the end result has given each class of drugs a fair shake. In this setting, NE antidepressants were among the least useful across a wide variety of psychiatric disorders, including depression. Reboxetine was not one of the drugs used, but since it is a NE antidepressant, it makes me wonder just how useful it is in the real world.
poster:JohnL
thread:24263
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000220/msgs/25041.html