Some 40 million people worldwide take the antidepressant drug Prozac. But according to a new study, it's actually no better than placebo.
What's even more damning is that the scientists got the data from studies that the pharmaceutical companies chose not to publish, through the Freedom of Information Act:
The review breaks new ground because Kirsch and his colleagues have obtained for the first time what they believe is a full set of trial data for four antidepressants.
They requested the full data under freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration, which licenses medicines in the US and requires all data when it makes a decision.
The pattern they saw from the trial results of fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone) was consistent. "Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance," they write.
Link - via Blue's News
Regardless of whether Prozac works for humans, it seems that it works very well for parrots: Owners Give Prozac to Depressed Pets - via Look at This
> better then a placebo. I have severe bipolar
> disorder, and the difference between when I am on
> my meds and off my meds is staggering.
That's what a placebo does. It makes you THINK you are being helped a great deal.... when it's actually doing nothing really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Q4dMy5aF8