The clinical effectiveness of sertraline in primary care and the role of depression severity and duration (PANDA): a pragmatic, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised trial

Publication date: Available online 19 September 2019Source: The Lancet PsychiatryAuthor(s): Gemma Lewis, Larisa Duffy, Anthony Ades, Rebekah Amos, Ricardo Araya, Sally Brabyn, Katherine S Button, Rachel Churchill, Catherine Derrick, Christopher Dowrick, Simon Gilbody, Christopher Fawsitt, William Hollingworth, Vivien Jones, Tony Kendrick, David Kessler, Daphne Kounali, Naila Khan, Paul Lanham, Jodi PervinSummaryBackgroundDepression is usually managed in primary care, but most antidepressant trials are of patients from secondary care mental health services, with eligibility criteria based on diagnosis and severity of depressive symptoms. Antidepressants are now used in a much wider group of people than in previous regulatory trials. We investigated the clinical effectiveness of sertraline in patients in primary care with depressive symptoms ranging from mild to severe and tested the role of severity and duration in treatment response.MethodsThe PANDA study was a pragmatic, multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised trial of patients from 179 primary care surgeries in four UK cities (Bristol, Liverpool, London, and York). We included patients aged 18 to 74 years who had depressive symptoms of any severity or duration in the past 2 years, where there was clinical uncertainty about the benefit of an antidepressant. This strategy was designed to improve the generalisability of our sample to current use of antidepressants within primary care. Patients were randomly as...
Source: The Lancet Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research