Belfast News Letter, The (Apr 15, 11:44 AM) ANTI-DEPRESSANTS cannot be recommended for treating children, researchers have said.
A study in the British Medical Journal reviewed six published trials of newer anti-depressant drugs in children, looking at their methods and conclusions.
The Australian researchers concluded that the findings of the trials had exaggerated the benefits of using antidepressants in children.
Last year, doctors in the UK were told not to prescribe the majority of antidepressants to children amid fears they could make young patients suicidal.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said most SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) - the most common type of antidepressant - were not suitable for under-18s.
The medicines watchdog studied a raft a evidence from drugs companies concerning the treatments and came to the conclusion that the risks outweighed the benefits.
The side-effects have been shown to include suicidal feelings, anxiety, insomnia, weight loss and headaches.
The latest BMJ study said that the trials reviewed were paid for by drug companies or the authors were remunerated by the firms.
The researchers said: "In discussing their own data, the authors of all of the four larger studies have exaggerated the benefits, downplayed the harms, or both.
"This raises the question of whether the journals that published the research reviewed the studies with a sufficient degree of scrutiny, given the importance of the subject."
The researchers, from the University of Adelaide, the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide and the University of South Australia, said no statistically significant advantage of drug over placebo was found.
They said that the fact that serious adverse effects with newer antidepressants were common enough to be detected in randomised controlled trials "raises serious concerns about their potential for harm".
"The magnitude of benefit is unlikely to be sufficient to justify risking those harms, so confidently recommending these drugs as a treatment option, let alone as first line treatment, would be inappropriate," the authors said.
The researchers, led by Jon Jureidini, said they were concerned that "biased reporting and overconfident treatment guidelines" may mislead doctors, patients and families.
"Many will undervalue non-drug treatments that are probably both safer and more effective.
"Accurate trial reports are a foundation of good medical care. "It is vital that authors, reviewers and editors ensure that published interpretations of data are more reasonable and balanced than is the case in the industry-dominated literature on childhood anti-depressants."
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "The DoH and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has led the way in issuing advice about the safety of antidepressant use in children.
"After carefully studying available evidence, we announced in December that the majority of SSRIs - the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressants - are not suitable to be used by under-18s.
"The UK is the only country in Europe to have issued comprehensive advice about the use of all SSRIs in children."
