Massive Number of Antidepressant Meta-Analyses Biased By Industry
A massive number of meta-analyses of antidepressant clinical trials have financial conflicts of interest and are unduly influenced by pharmaceutical companies, according to a review to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. Researchers also found that meta-analyses with industry ties almost never report any negative findings in their abstracts.
“Many Antidepressant Studies Found Tainted by Pharma Company Influence”
The Scientific American reports on a new analysis of antidepressant trials revealing that the vast majority of meta-analyses have industry links and suppress negative results.
Psychotherapy Effectiveness for Depression Inflated by Publication Bias
While publication bias has been known to overestimate the efficacy of antidepressant treatments, a new study suggests that research on the use of psychotherapy in depression suffers from a similar bias.
Antidepressants Not Superior to Psychotherapy for Severe Depression
On Wednesday, JAMA Psychiatry released a meta-analysis comparing the results of cognitive-behavioral therapy and antidepressant medication in severely depressed populations. Currently, many practice guidelines suggest that antidepressants be used over psychotherapy for major depressive disorder. The analysis, however, found that “patients with more severe depression were no more likely to require medications to improve than patients with less severe depression.”
Members of FDA Advisory Committee Offer Perspectives on Flibanserin Approval in JAMA
In the September issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) three FDA advisory committee members describe the convergence of factors that made the committee’s recommendation to approve flibanserin especially challenging and politically charged.
“Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed, Study Says”
Today’s NY Times front page featured a story on the problem reproducibility poses for many psychology studies. The story is based on the results of a year-long study where the researchers found they were unable to reproduce 60 out of 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals. “The overall ‘effect size,’ a measure of the strength of a finding, dropped by about half across all of the studies.”
Former Duke Psychiatry Chair Calls for BMJ to Retract Article about Antidepressant Black Box...
A former Duke University psychiatry chair is calling for a retraction of a study suggesting that the FDA's black-box warnings about increased suicidality in youth taking SSRIs led to increases in adolescent suicide attempts.
Here’s the Real Data: No Increase in Suicide Attempts Following Black Box Warning
A British Medical Journal study led by Harvard Medical School's Christine Lu suggested that black box warnings about increased suicidality in youth who take antidepressants actually led to increases in adolescent suicide attempts. However, the latest in a stream of critics of that conclusion are the authors of one of the key studies cited by Lu in support of her team's analysis.
Upon Further Review: Did the Black Box Warning on SSRIs Lead to Increased Suicide...
A study that appeared online in the British Medical Journal suggests that the FDA’s warning in 2003 that antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal ideation in youth paradoxically led to an increase in suicide attempts in this age group. Media reports on the study tell of how the black-box warning “backfired.” But is this conclusion warranted by the study? Or is the study flawed? And how did the media report on this story?
