One of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, sertraline, has been found to reduce anxiety symptoms several weeks before any improvement in depressive symptoms, a large placebo-controlled study has found.
Participants who took sertraline showed no improvement in depressive symptoms in six weeks, and there was weak evidence that the drug had reduced these symptoms after 12 weeks, reported the researchers, from University College London.
But these participants were also twice as likely as those who took a placebo to say their mental health had improved overall. This feedback is an important measure of improvement and can be used to gauge clinically meaningful treatment effects, the investigators said. In addition, the researchers found no evidence of side effects or adverse events among participants taking sertraline when compared to those on the placebo.
Anxiety often accompanies depression, and the UCL researchers say their findings support the continued use of sertraline for people experiencing depressive symptoms.
“It appears that people taking the drug are feeling less anxious, so they feel better overall, even if their depressive symptoms were less affected,” said the study’s lead author, Gemma Lewis, Ph.D.
Clinicians should be aware of which symptoms are likely to be treated by an antidepressant, added senior author Glyn Lewis, Ph.D. “They work, just in a different way than we had expected.”
Sertraline is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the most common class of antidepressants. This study, funded by a British government health agency, is the largest-ever placebo-controlled trial of an antidepressant not funded by the pharmaceutical industry, the researchers said. It was published this month in The Lancet Psychiatry.
