Placebo-controlled treatment trial of depression in elderly physically ill patients

✍ Scribed by Mavis Evans; Margaret Hammond; Kenneth Wilson; Michael Lye; John Copeland

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 136 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1166(199708)12:8<817::aid-gps645>3.0.co;2-4

✦ Synopsis

Objectives:

To determine the response of physically ill elderly depressed patients to treatment.

Design:

Acute geriatric medical inpatients with depression, randomly assigned to an 8-week double-blind placebo-controlled trial of fluoxetine.

Main outcome measure:

Response rate as defined by the 17-item hamilton depression rating scale.

Results:

Eighty-two patients entered the trial; 62 patients (all those who had completed at least 3 weeks of treatment) were included in the efficacy analysis. forty-two completed the full 8 weeks (21 in each group) with response rates of 67% in the fluoxetine group and 38% in the placebo group. no significant difference was found between the responses of the two groups (p = 0.12). there was a trend for results in the fluoxetine group to continue to improve with time. on secondary analysis those patients with serious physical illness who completed 5 or more weeks (n = 37) showed a significant improvement in mood if treated with fluoxetine (p = 0.02).

Conclusions:

The main benefit of antidepressants is to approximately double the chances of recovery. this trial showed the response rate of the fluoxetine treated group was increased by a factor of 1.8 over the placebo group in an 8-week period. the presence of physical illness, often severe and/or multiple, did not reduce the effectiveness of the medication, which was well tolerated overall. those with serious physical disease responded significantly better to drug treatment; this will require further work. psychological support was also considered to be important.