Anyone suffering through the agonies of depression may want to ask this question but may never muster up the initiative to do so. The answer may be the key to better treatment, especially when the big picture is examined.Dr. Charles Nemeroff asked the question and found some intriguing answers. He and his team of researchers reviewed the results of 34 randomized, double-blind, controlled trials that all compared a single SNRI (venlafaxine) to several popular SSRIs.

Effexor is a popular brand name for the drug venlafaxine, a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI). By involving norepinephrine, it differs from SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which are marketed under brand names such as Prozac (fluoxetine) and Celexa (citalopram).

The pooled study revealed that 5.9% of study participants improved with the SNRI instead of the SSRIs, especially those taking Prozac. Unfortunately, Effexor can trigger some rather unpleasant side effects that frequently lead patients to stop taking it before full benefit is achieved.

The 5.9% rate for improvement is equivalent to about one in every 17 patients taking it, a rate that seems small when considered on the scale of the individual patient.

When considered on a much larger scale, however, the benefit of the SNRI becomes more apparent. In fact, John Krystal, MD, editor of Biological Psychiatry and an affiliate of Yale University School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration’s Connecticut Healthcare System, has described the research as an important advance for the public healthcare system in general.

There are an estimated 21 million Americans diagnosed with depression at any one time, or about 7.1% of the entire population. If 5.9% of these patients experienced improvement of symptoms when taking the SNRI, that would account for more than 1 million people enjoying remission from what is often a debilitating disorder.

Nemeroff is lead author of a paper describing the study. Full details can be found in Volume 63, Issue 4, dated February 15, of Biological Psychiatry. Nemeroff is affiliated with Emory University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in Atlanta.

Source: Elsevier