Antidepressants for Major Depressive Disorder and Dysthymic Disorder in Patients With Comorbid Alcohol Use Disorders
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Mood and alcohol use disorders are often co-occurring, each condition complicating the course and outcome of the other. The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of antidepressants in patients with unipolar major depressive disorder (MDD) and/or dysthymic disorder with comorbid alcohol use disorders and to compare antidepressant and placebo response rates between depressed patients with or without comorbid alcohol use disorders. DATA SOURCES: MEDLINE/PubMed publication databases were searched for randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of antidepressants used as monotherapy for the acute-phase treatment of MDD and/or dysthymic disorder in patients with or without alcohol use disorders. The search term placebo was cross-referenced with each of the antidepressants approved by the US, Canadian, or European Union drug regulatory agencies for the treatment of MDD and/or dysthymic disorder. STUDY SELECTION: 195 articles were found eligible for inclusion in our analysis, 11 of which focused on the treatment of MDD/dysthymic disorder in patients with comorbid alcohol use disorders. The search was limited to articles published between January 1, 1980, and March 15, 2009 (inclusive). RESULTS: We found that antidepressant therapy was more effective than placebo in patients with comorbid alcohol use disorders (risk ratio of response = 1.336; P = .021). However, this was not the case when selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants were examined alone (P > .05). There was no significant difference in the relative efficacy of antidepressants (versus placebo) when comparing studies in MDD/dysthymic disorder patients with or without alcohol use disorders (P = .973). Meta-regression analyses yielded no significant differences in the risk ratio of responding to antidepressants versus placebo in trials with comorbid alcohol use disorders, whether antidepressants were used alone or adjunctively to psychotherapy, whether they were used in patients actively drinking or recently sober, or whether they were used in pure MDD or in combined MDD and dysthymic disorder populations. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the utility of certain antidepressants (tricyclics, nefazodone) in treating depression in patients with comorbid alcohol use disorders. More data on the use of newer antidepressants, including the SSRIs, for this select patient population are needed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".