Atypical antipsychotics - psychiatrists " not duped, but beguiled"!
Posted on May 19, 2008 in Antibiotic (Category: Default)
A study funded by the British government, has compared treatment results from a broad range of older antipsychotic drugs against results from newer "atypical antipsychotics".
The study was requested by Britain's National Health Service to determine whether the newer drugs ( which can cost 10 times as much as the older ones ) are worth the difference in price.
Guess what? They aren't!
Schizophrenia patients do as well, or perhaps even better, on older psychiatric drugs compared with newer and far costlier medications, according to a study published yesterday that overturns conventional wisdom about antipsychotic drugs, which cost the United States $10 billion a year.
The results are causing consternation. The researchers who conducted the trial were so certain they would find exactly the opposite that they went back to make sure the research data had not been recorded backward.
The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, is likely to add to a growing debate about prescribing patterns of antipsychotic drugs. A U.S. government study last year called CATIE found that one of the older drugs did as well as newer ones.
Yesterday, in an editorial accompanying the British study, the lead researcher in the U.S. trial asked how an entire medical field could have been misled into thinking that the expensive drugs, such as Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel, were much better.
"The claims of superiority for the [newer drugs] were greatly exaggerated," wrote Columbia University psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman. "This may have been encouraged by an overly expectant community of clinicians and patients eager to believe in the power of new medications. At the same time, the aggressive marketing of these drugs may have contributed to this enhanced perception of their effectiveness in the absence of empirical information."
Peter Jones, a psychiatrist at the University of Cambridge in England who led the study, searched yesterday for the right word to describe what had happened to his colleagues.
" 'Duped' is not right," he said. "We were beguiled."
More at the WaPo.
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The study was requested by Britain's National Health Service to determine whether the newer drugs ( which can cost 10 times as much as the older ones ) are worth the difference in price.
Guess what? They aren't!
Schizophrenia patients do as well, or perhaps even better, on older psychiatric drugs compared with newer and far costlier medications, according to a study published yesterday that overturns conventional wisdom about antipsychotic drugs, which cost the United States $10 billion a year.
The results are causing consternation. The researchers who conducted the trial were so certain they would find exactly the opposite that they went back to make sure the research data had not been recorded backward.
The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, is likely to add to a growing debate about prescribing patterns of antipsychotic drugs. A U.S. government study last year called CATIE found that one of the older drugs did as well as newer ones.
Yesterday, in an editorial accompanying the British study, the lead researcher in the U.S. trial asked how an entire medical field could have been misled into thinking that the expensive drugs, such as Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel, were much better.
"The claims of superiority for the [newer drugs] were greatly exaggerated," wrote Columbia University psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman. "This may have been encouraged by an overly expectant community of clinicians and patients eager to believe in the power of new medications. At the same time, the aggressive marketing of these drugs may have contributed to this enhanced perception of their effectiveness in the absence of empirical information."
Peter Jones, a psychiatrist at the University of Cambridge in England who led the study, searched yesterday for the right word to describe what had happened to his colleagues.
" 'Duped' is not right," he said. "We were beguiled."
More at the WaPo.