FDA approves antidepressant Lexapro for adolescents

The decision comes after Justice Department allegations that the drug's maker, Forest Laboratories, had improperly induced pediatricians to prescribe it and a similar pill, Celexa.


Just weeks after prosecutors accused Forest Laboratories Inc. of illegally marketing its antidepressants Celexa and Lexapro to children and paying pediatricians kickbacks, U.S. health regulators Friday approved Lexapro for depression in kids.

Forest said Lexapro was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat major depressive disorder in adolescents aged 12 to 17 and as a maintenance therapy to control symptoms. It is already approved for adults, and registers annual sales of more than $2 billion.

The FDA on Friday approved Lexapro's use for adolescents based on favorable results in two clinical trials -- one involving adolescents taking Lexapro and another involving children and adolescents taking the chemically similar Celexa, Forest said.

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Which antidepressants are most effective?

The glut of antidepressant drugs on the market and the ads for them may have you – not to mention doctors – wondering how to tell one from the other. But a new study sheds light on which ones may be most effective in battling the blues.

Topping the list of a dozen prescription antidepressants reviewed: Zoloft and Lexapro. Patients taking those drugs in trials were also the least likely to drop out. But because Zoloft, made by New York-based Pfizer, is now off patent and available in relatively cheap, generic form, it may be the better choice for patients starting antidepressant therapy, write authors of the study published today in The Lancet, who are from Italy, Greece, England and Japan.

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Antidepressant Has Modest Benefits in Anxious Older Patients

Treating generalized anxiety disorder in patients 60 and older with a selective serotinin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) significantly improved their symptoms as long as they took the drug, researchers here said.

The response rate among patients taking escitalopram (Lexapro) for up to 12 weeks was 69%, compared with 51% assigned to placebo in a randomized trial (P=0.03), reported Eric J. Lenze, M.D., of Washington University, and colleagues in the Jan. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

There were significantly greater improvements with the active drug versus placebo for activity limitations, social function, worry questionnaire scores, and overall anxiety symptoms and role functioning, the researchers said.

But the researchers characterized the improvements in the 179-patient trial as "modest," and diminished further by nonadherence.

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Forest Laboratories' Lexapro Still Leads First-Line Therapy in the Treatment of Major Depression, but Atypical Antipsychotics Are Coming On Strong

Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms focusing on pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that Forest Laboratories' Lexapro leads first-line therapy in the treatment of major depression. According to the new report entitled Treatment Algorithms in Major Depression, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which include Lexapro, serve 63.6 percent of patients on first-line therapy. Surveyed physicians say the reasons for SSRIs being so heavily used are efficacy, cost and physician familiarity. Eighty percent of surveyed psychiatrists and 70 percent of surveyed primary care physicians (PCPs) say they choose SSRIs over benzodiazepines because of efficacy. Forty-nine percent of surveyed psychiatrists cite cost as the prime reason they choose SSRIs over serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), while 49 percent of PCPs say they choose SSRIs over SNRIs owing to familiarity with the former class.

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Antidepressants most prescribed drugs in U.S.

Dr. Ronald Dworkin tells the story of a woman who didn't like the way her husband was handling the family finances. She wanted to start keeping the books herself but didn't want to insult her husband.

Antidepressants such as Paxil, Prozac and Lexapro are among America's most-prescribed drugs.

The doctor suggested she try an antidepressant to make herself feel better.

She got the antidepressant, and she did feel better, said Dr. Dworkin, who told the story in his book "Artificial Unhappiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class." But in the meantime, Dworkin says, the woman's husband led the family into financial ruin.

"Doctors are now medicating unhappiness," said Dworkin. "Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives."

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