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| |  Desvenlafaxine Reduces Anxiety Associated With Major Depressive Disorder: Presented at WCBP By Jill Stein PARIS -- June 30, 2009 -- Desvenlafaxine improves the anxiety symptoms that are commonly associated with major depressive disorder (MDD), according to a study presented here on June 28 at the 9th World Congress of Biological Psychiatry (WCBP). Phil T. Ninan, MD, Global Medical Affairs, Wyeth Research, Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and colleagues reported data from 933 patients who had been randomly assigned to treatment with desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day (administered as desvenlafaxine succinate) or placebo. The analysis included adult outpatients who had been diagnosed with MDD without a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis and who were drawn from 3 similarly designed 8-week trials. The primary outcome of the analysis was the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D17) anxiety/somatisation factor, which is the summary of the anxiety/psychic, anxiety/somatic, somatic/gastrointestinal, somatic/general, hypochondriasis, and insight items. The mean baseline HAM-D17 anxiety/somatisation factor score for each treatment group was 7.6, which suggests that many patients would have satisfied previously described criteria for anxious depression, the researchers said. The analysis showed that treatment with desvenlafaxine was associated with statistically significant improvement versus placebo on the HAM-D17 anxiety/somatisation factor (4.1 vs 4.7; P < .001). Significantly more improvement was observed 4 of the 6 items that comprise this factor: anxiety/psychic, P < .001; anxiety/somatic, P < .05; somatic/general, P < .05; hypochondriasis, P < .05. The desvenlafaxine and placebo groups did not differ significantly with respect to the somatic/gastrointestinal and insight items. The analysis also demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in Covi Anxiety total score for desvenlafaxine compared with placebo (4.9 and 5.3; P < .001). The most frequent treatment-emergent adverse events in patients assigned to desvenlafaxine were nausea, dizziness, insomnia, hyperhidrosis, constipation, fatigue, and decreased appetite. Overall, 4.5% of desvenlafaxine-treated patients and 4.0% of placebo-treated patients dropped out of the study prematurely because of side effects. The researchers said that their findings support the efficacy of desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day for improving MDD symptoms and the anxiety symptoms that are commonly reported by patients with MDD. Funding for this study was provided by Wyeth Research. [Presentation title: The Efficacy of Desvenlafaxine 50 mg/d for Improving Anxiety Symptoms in Patients With Major Depressive Disorder: A Pooled Analysis. Abstract P-10-014]
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