We are very heartened by the thoughtful responses to our article. Unlike some of the responses to a previous meta-analysis of antidepressant drug effects ( Kirsch & Sapirstein, 1998), there is now unanimous agreement among commentators that the mean difference between response to antidepressant drugs and response to inert placebo is very small. It is so small that, despite sample sizes involvin...

BACKGROUND Adherence to antidepressant medication use is a problem in clinical practice. Some authors have posited that combined psychological treatment facilitates adherence to pharmacotherapy. OBJECTIVES To study the relationship between adherence to use of and efficacy of antidepressant drugs plus psychological treatment vs drug treatment alone in depressive disorders. DATA SOURCES MEDLI...

the antidepressant effects of aloe vera hydro alcoholic extract at different concentrations were compared with the fluoxetine-treated and the control groups of mice using forced - swimming, fst and open box, oft tests. the mice were evaluated in five groups (control, taking aloe vera at the dosage levels of 150 mg/kg, 300 mg/kg, and 450 mg/kg, and finally fluoxetine at a dose of 10 mg/kg) by th...

Introduction: The model for screening antidepressant-like activity in pre-clinical drug studies include, rat forced swimming test (FST). The reports on N-acetylcysteine (NAC) as an antioxidant supplement in stress related disorder is well documented. This study was aimed at potential antidepressant mechanism of N- Acetyl Cysteine (NAC), a glutamate precursor on FST animal model for screening an...

UNLABELLED Improvements in placebo groups of antidepressant trials account for a major part of the expected drug effects. We aimed to determine overall effect sizes of placebo and drug effects in antidepressant trials, and to analyze whether the placebo effect in antidepressant trials also occurs for patient self-perception, general psychopathology, and quality of life. METHODS Search terms c...

Current hypotheses cannot fully explain the clinically observed heterogeneity in antidepressant response. The therapeutic latency of antidepressants suggests that therapeutic outcomes are achieved not by the acute effects of the drugs, but rather by the homeostatic changes that occur as the brain adapts to their chronic administration. We present a computational model that represents the known ...

Placebo-controlled randomized trials for antidepressants and other drugs often show a response for a sizeable percentage of the subjects in the placebo group. Potential placebo responders can be assumed to exist also in the drug treatment group, making it difficult to assess the drug effect. A key drug research focus should be to estimate the percentage of individuals among those who responded ...

BACKGROUND In Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), treatment outcomes with currently available strategies are often disappointing. Therefore, it is sensible to develop new strategies to increase remission rates in acutely depressed patients. Many studies reported that true drug response can be observed within 14 days (early improvement) of antidepressant treatment. The identical time course of symp...