Placebos and Antidepressants

Want to know where we get the ‘up to 70% success’ claim in our packaging?

"The placebo response, noted as an early or nonpersistent improvement in response to an inactive agent, represents one of the most significant challenges in central nervous system (CNS) drug development. Despite a wealth of documentation, there is no commonly accepted definition of this phenomenon. However, it is agreed that there has been a significant increase in the placebo response in the last 20 years, particularly in clinical trials with antidepressant medications for major depressive disorder (MDD).

Estimates as high as 70% have been reported for CNS clinical trials. (our italics) Such large placebo rates have a significant impact on the cost and speed of drug development.

Since fewer than half of the depressed patients who receive active medications in psychiatric trials show clinically significant improvement, some critics claim that antidepressants are no better than placebo treatment, and their illusory superiority depends on poorly designed studies and biased clinical evaluations. In a set of six identically designed, three-arm, parallel controlled trials submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for an antidepressant drug, Leber reported that antidepressants could not be distinguished from placebo in five of the six studies."

Ref. Richard Entsuah, Phil Vinall: Potential Predictors of Placebo Response: Lessons From a Large Database, Drug Information Journal. Ambler: 2007. Vol. 41, Iss. 3; pg. 315, 16 pgs