UK Says Zoloft and Lexapro Best Antidepressants
The UK tested ten popular antidepressants for moderate to severe depression and discovered that, contrary to what a 2006 American study showed and what Big Pharma has been telling us, not all antidepressants are alike. Two anitdepressants did just a wee bit better than eight others — Zoloft/Lustral (sertraline) and Lexapro/Cipralex (escitalopram).
These will most likely be the first drugs now prescribed for UK depressives. If they don’t work, then they would move on to other antidepressants.
Study Specs
This superstudy was a massive one, following over 26,000 patients from 1991 - 2007. Basically, what it did was compile information from 100 other antidrepressant studies in that time period. It was just published last week in Britian’s premeir medical journal, The Lancet.
The other antidepressants (which seemed to then be rated in no particular order) Prozac, Cymbalta, Celexa, Ixel (minalcipram), Efexor, Luvox, Zyban and Seroxat/Paxil.
Zoloft and Lexapro won Best In Show based on three factors:
- Cost (gotta be generic)
- How bad the side effects were, including nausea, sleep problems and sexual whoopsies
- How well a depressive improves
But, the study warns that if you are doing fine on your current medication PLEASE don’t switch.
What This Means
Patients have been telling their doctors for a long time that not all antidepressants are alike and act on them differently. It had been assumed that any differences were slight or just a result of the quirks of an individual patient.
So, this study will probably do more change to how doctors prescribe drugs than to actually anyone who takes these drugs. But if you’ve never been on antidepressants and have just been diagnosed with depression, then hopefully this will shorten the trial and error time of finding new medication.
Hope this helps.
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