Clinical features and drug plasma concentrations were studied in 13 children admitted to hospital with tricyclic antidepressant poisoning. Patients with plasma concentrations below 500 microgram/l had anticholinergic signs and increased reflexes but did not have convulsions or cardiac arrhythmias. Four patients with plasma concentrations above 1000 microgram/l suffered convulsions, cardiac arrh...

Clinical studies have shown that people suffering from chronic pain are often also burdened by depression. Antidepressants are widely used to treat painful chronic rheumatic conditions but, contrary to neuropathic conditions, however, little is known about their mechanisms of action. This article reviews the available evidence on the efficacy and safety of antidepressants in major chronic pain ...

Several studies over the past 15 years have compared the number of fatal poisonings due to antidepressant drugs in the United Kingdom with drug use statistics to derive a fatal toxicity index: deaths per million prescriptions. 2 Greater than 10-fold differences in the index have been shown between tricyclic antidepressants and even larger differences between some tricyclics and newer antidepres...

Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Abbreviations: ANOVA: Analysis of Variance; CBT: Cognitive Behavior Therapy; GABA: Gamma Amino Butyric Acid; GAD: Generalized Anxiety Disorder; OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; SAD: Social Anxiety Disorder; PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; SNRI: Serotonin Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors; SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Sciences; SSRI...

The use of carbamazepine has been reported to be an effective treatment for severe depression. We have already shown that the antidepressant-like effects of tricyclic antidepressants in the rat forced swim test (FST) are blocked by chronic treatment with adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). In the present study, we examined the effect of the chronic administration of carbamazepine on the FST and...

The increasing number of children admitted to this hospital with poisoning by tricyclic antidepressants is causing concern. Of 60 children admitted between January 1966 and July 1973, half were admitted in the last 18 months. In 60% of these patients the tricyclic compounds had been prescribed for nocturnal enuresis. One child aged 2 years and 4 months died of imipramine poisoning. It is impera...

Studies establishing the use of new antidepressants often rely simply on proving efficacy of a new compound, comparing against placebo and single compound. The advent of large online databases in which patients themselves rate drugs allows for a new Big Data-driven approach to compare the efficacy and patient satisfaction with sample sizes exceeding previous studies. Exemplifying this approach ...

Of all the controversies over the different medi cations used in psychiatry, there is probably least dispute about the effectiveness of antidepressants in controlling depressive illness. However, the choice of which antidepressant to use is bedevilled by the spectre of potential toxicity from adverse effects, interactions and overdose. The unwanted effects may vary from mild and tolerable to po...