Citalopram Compared to Dothiepin and Placebo: Effects on Cognitive Function and Psychomotor Performance

✍ Scribed by D. B. FAIRWEATHER; C. DAL POZZO; J. S. KERR; S. V. LAFFERTY; I. HINDMARCH

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 153 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6222
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1077(199703/04)12:2<119::aid-hup847>3.0.co;2-w

✦ Synopsis

Three doses of citalopram (10, 20 and 40 mg), and placebo were administered to healthy volunteers for periods of 8 days each. Dothiepin 75 mg was given as an acute dose on days 1 and 8 only, with placebo dothiepin on days 2±7. Subjects were tested on days 1 and 8 of the dosing periods on a battery of psychometric tests. The results showed that citalopram at all doses had no detrimental eects on psychomotor performance. The eect of citalopram on critical ¯icker fusion (CFF) was to raise thresholds. This indicates an improvement in CNS function, i.e. an elevation of cognitive processing ability, with no evidence of an arousing or alerting eect. The eects were apparent after both acute and sub-chronic dosing. These data are in contrast to those collected for dothiepin, which showed signi®cant impairment of cognitive and psychomotor function on most of the measures employed. The most frequent adverse events reported for citalopram were drowsiness, nausea and headache, with the nausea appearing to be dose dependent. The main adverse events reported for dothiepin were drowsiness, sleepiness and dizziness. The rates of adverse events for all active treatments were not statistically signi®cantly dierent to placebo. It is concluded that citalopram is relatively free from behavioural toxicity and so represents a signi®cant improvement over the older antidepressant agents such as dothiepin.