Drugs Work for Compulsive Disorders
Tuesday November 24 8:59 PM ET
By BRENDA C. COLEMAN AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO (AP) - Newly published research confirms that drugs are effective in treating children with obsessive-compulsive disorder, an illness that afflicts hundreds of thousands of youngsters nationwide.
The newest medication shown safe and effective in compulsive youngsters is sertraline, marketed as Zoloft, according to the study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
''There are lots of kids who are undiagnosed, or if they are diagnosed are not being treated,'' said the study's lead author, Dr. John S. March of Duke University Medical Center. He said drugs work best when combined with psychotherapy.
The findings bring to three the number of similar drugs that have worked well in large trials among compulsive children at multiple medical centers, said Dr. Judith L. Rapoport of the Child Psychiatry
Branch of the National Institutes of Health.
The Food and Drug Administration used the study, funded by Zoloft maker Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE - news), as evidence for approving the drug for treating OCD in children. It already had been approved for the disorder in adults.
The other OCD drugs approved for both age groups are clomipramine, marketed as Anafranil, and fluvoxamine, marketed as Luvox. In addition, the antidepressant fluoxetine, marketed as Prozac, has
been reported in small trials to work well in childhood OCD, Rapoport said.
Like the other drugs, Prozac buoys brain levels of serotonin, a chemical messenger between nerves that is key in mood, sleep and appetite. Its role in OCD is unknown, but sufferers of OCD often
have overlapping problems with depression, anxiety or eating disorders, previous studies show.
Hallmarks of OCD are senseless and repetitive thoughts and behaviors that typically deal with grooming, contamination or danger. An example would be excessive hand-washing.
Up to half of adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder show the first signs of it in childhood. And up to half of children identified with OCD respond to drug treatment, Rapoport wrote in an editorial
accompanying the study.
Estimates of the prevalence of obsessive-compulsive disorder range from 0.5 percent to 1 percent of U.S. school-age children, or about 250,000 to 500,000 youngsters.
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