Posted by Larry Hoover on December 11, 2005, at 10:14:54
In reply to Re: What!, posted by linkadge on December 10, 2005, at 21:16:57
> For goodness sake. England thought enough of the data connecting SSRI's to suicidal behavior to make significant changes to their prescribing habits for SSRI's in children.
>
> LinkadgeThat was a precautionary act, due to lack of safety data. The recommendation was for closer monitoring, something I also have long advocated, both for adults and children.
Just last month, a major report was tabled.
Neuropsychopharmacology advance online publication 23 November 2005;
doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1300958ACNP Task Force Report on SSRIs and Suicidal Behavior in Youth
Conclusion:
The Task Force concluded that SSRIs and other new generation antidepressant drugs, in aggregate, are associated with a small increase in the risk of AE reports of suicidal thinking or suicide attempts in youth. The evidence for this comes from the FDA meta-analyses of all pediatric RCTs of antidepressants. This effect is quite variable across SSRIs and it is not clear if that variance is a measurement error or represents a real difference between medications. Systematic questionnaire data do not identify a risk for more suicidal ideation on SSRIs, raising concerns over ascertainment artifacts in the AE report method. Three other lines of evidence in youth, epidemiology, and autopsy studies, and recent cohort surveys (Valuck et al, 2004; Simon et al, 2005), do not support the hypothesis that SSRIs induce suicidal acts and suicide, instead indicating a possible beneficial effect, and that a negligible number of youth suicides are taking antidepressants at the time of death.
I did a similar review some months ago, and came to an identical set of conclusions. Adverse event reporting in clinical trials falsely suggested suicidal acts were occurring, due to systematic methodological deficiencies. Autopsy data do not support the theory that SSRIs contribute to youth suicide. In fact, net reductions have been clearly demonstrated.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:587690
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051211/msgs/588011.html