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Sunday 22 June 2014

The Pharma Chronicles: Prof Peter C Gøtzsche BMJ response re antidepressants increasing the risks of suicide in young people....

The Pharma Chronicles: Prof Peter C Gøtzsche BMJ response re antidepressa...: Peter Gøtzsche BMJ response by Prof Peter C Gøtzsche , Nordic Cochrane Centre, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen:   'Re: Changes in antid...

'Re: Changes in antidepressant use by young people and suicidal behavior after FDA warnings and media coverage: quasi-experimental study'

"The study is not reliable  

Lu et al. reported that suicide attempts in young people increased after the FDA warned in 2003 and 2004 that SSRIs can increase just that: the risk of suicidal behaviour in young people (1). They found substantial reductions in antidepressant use after the warnings and believe that this caused the increase in suicide attempts.  

This is contrary to what would be expected. The FDA’s large meta-analysis of 100,000 patients who had participated in placebo-controlled randomised trials found that antidepressants increase suicidal behaviour up till about the age of 40 (2), and in young people, the risk was doubled, as Lu et al. also report (1). This result was found despite the fact that many suicides and suicide attempts on active drugs were missing in the FDA analysis (3).   

It is therefore a highly convincing finding that antidepressants increase the risk of suicide in young people, and randomised trials are far more reliable than the before-after analysis that Lu et al. presented, which seemed to find the opposite result. There must therefore be major problems with their research ..."

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