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To: Anthony Wong who wrote (6307)	11/17/1998 8:59:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 9523

Sertraline [Zoloft] helps chronic depression Tuesday November 17 5:35 PM ET dailynews.yahoo.com

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (6307)	11/17/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9523

Sertraline Beneficial For Ongoing Treatment Of Chronic Depression CHICAGO, IL -- Nov. 17, 1998 -- Sertraline, a drug used for treatment of acute phases of depression, is effective for ongoing use to prevent recurrence and re-emergence of depression in chronically depressed patients, according to an article in tomorrow's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Martin Keller, M.D., Brown University, Providence, R.I., and colleagues looked at the use of sertraline in a 76-week study conducted from September 1993 to November 1996. "One of the most widely accepted tenets of modern psychopharmacology is the value of maintenance treatment of major depression," they said. "And yet this de facto consensus treatment strategy remains largely an article of faith, resting as it does on a tenuous empirical base of a small number of placebo-controlled studies totalling fewer than 600 patients." This multicentre, placebo-controlled randomised trial is the first to report on the maintenance phase efficacy of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant in patients experiencing chronic depression. "The results of this study demonstrate unequivocally that sertraline protects against recurrence or re-emergence of depression and considerably extends the time in remission for this high-risk population," they write. "Whether these results are specific to sertraline, or generalise to SSRI antidepressants as a class, will need to be clarified in further maintenance treatment studies." Researchers studied 161 outpatients who had chronic major or double depression who responded to sertraline in a 12-week double-blind, acute-phase treatment trial. These patients were then enrolled in the maintenance study. Researchers discovered that patients receiving placebo were more than two times as likely to experience re-emergence of depression (significant depressive symptoms re-emerged in 20 of 77 patients treated with sertraline versus 42 of 84 patients who received placebo). Patients receiving placebo were four times as likely to experience depression as patients taking sertraline during maintenance therapy. Patients were given a test to determine depression symptoms at the beginning and end of the study. Those on maintenance sertraline resulted in significantly better outcomes on all six symptom measures. The authors explained that a history of prior depressive recurrences, subsyndromal symptoms, depression secondary to other psychiatric disorders, socio-economic status, severity of depression and chronicity of depression are all risk factors that predict a higher likelihood of recurrent depression. The researchers indicate that the presence of one or more of these risk factors suggests that further maintenance antidepressant therapy might be required following the initial treatment. When compared with other medical diseases, the recent World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease study identified depression as being one of the four most disabling illnesses in the world, the researchers explained. Depression also has economic costs which result from reduced capacity to perform normal social roles such as working and parenting. Depressed persons also experience diminished quality-of-life dimensions and may use medical services excessively.