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St John's Wort and Major Depression
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To the Editor: Dr Shelton and colleagues1 found that St John's wort (Hypericum perforatum) was ineffective to treat chronic major depression. St John's wort, however, is generally recommended for use in mild-to-moderate depressive disorders. From the study design, it is unclear whether any medication would have been effective in this sample since no patient received conventional antidepressant medications and an unusually low placebo response rate occurred (18.6%, as compared with the usual 30% to 50% placebo response in other trials on depression). We find no evidence in this study that precludes potential benefits for patients who were less severely and chronically depressed. In fact, according to one definition of remission, a significantly greater percentage of patients responded to St John's wort (14.3%) than to placebo (4.9%), even in this study.
Finally, these data were reported at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in May 2000.2 However, the number of . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Effectiveness of St John's Wort in Major Depression: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Richard C. Shelton, Martin B. Keller, Alan Gelenberg, David L. Dunner, Robert Hirschfeld, Michael E. Thase, James Russell, R. Bruce Lydiard, Paul Crits-Christoph, Robert Gallop, Linda Todd, David Hellerstein, Paul Goodnick, Gabor Keitner, Stephen M. Stahl, and Uriel Halbreich
JAMA. 2001;285(15):1978-1986.
ABSTRACT
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