The efficiency of the antidepressants would be overvalued, according to the results of a survey published in the New England Newspaper of Medicine. The researchers noticed that most studies that had gotten negative results had not been published.
The researchers of the department of psychiatry and pharmacology of the Oregon Health and Science University first calculated the size of the therapeutic effect of 12 classic antidepressants while founding on the data published in the medical magazines destined to the physicians.
They redid the exercise then while taking account of the set of the clinical tests led with these antidepressants, that they have or non are the subject of a publication.
According to the results, the efficiency of the antidepressants was even overvalued when one only took account of the published studies: the effect was from 11% to 69% superior to the reality. While 94% of the tests published had given positive results, this proportion fell to 51% when one didn’t take into account the set of the data.
Not less 89% of the studies having produced negative or questionable results had not been published or had made the object of a publication that presented, in spite of all, the data under one day favorable, underline the researchers.
According to the Dr Turner, who directed the team of researchers, " such a slant in the selection of the articles published in the medical magazines incites the physicians to believe that the medicines are not more efficient than they it are really". The researcher specifies however that it doesn’t mean that the antidepressants are completely inefficient.
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