I was made aware of an alarming trend by Ivanhoe Insider, an interesting website from which I receive a great deal of useful information. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck, considering the weight that is given to prescription medicine study results by the media, and the influence they have on consumers - most likely the consumers who do not listen to the little quiet voice listing the side effects, which always seem to me to be 10 times worse than the actual disease.  Remember Victor Borge ?  "My Uncle invented a cure for which there was not disease" - pause for laughs, then "Unfortunately, he caught the cure and died." Talk about prescient!

Ivanhoe is commenting on the published results of antidepressants:  "Turner’s team found that whether and how the studies were published depended on how they turned out.  They found 94 percent of the studies had positive results, but the FDA data showed only half of the study were positive.  All but one of the positive studies was published.  Most of the studies that were not positive were not published or they were published with a positive spin.  "

Turning to the study itself, I have excerpted the relevant piece, because it is so far down in the text:

A Cochrane systematic review of antidepressants for generalized anxiety disorder lists only one double-blind placebo-controlled study of paroxetine,  a positive study. A PubMed search reveals no additional double-blind placebo-controlled studies. In accessing the review from Drugs@FDA (approval date April 2001), we learn that there were in fact three pivotal double-blind placebo-controlled studies. One of these studies corresponds to the published positive study noted above. Of the remaining two studies, both apparently unpublished, one was positive while the other was marginally positive.

Turning to the controlled-release formulation of paroxetine (Paxil CR) for panic disorder, a review article states in its abstract that the drug “demonstrated efficacy in three well designed studies in patients with panic disorder with or without agoraphobia”. In reading the corresponding FDA statistical review, we verify that there were indeed three studies. However, the FDA statistical reviewer found that only one of these studies was strongly positive. A second study, judged “supportive” of efficacy, had a marginally significant (p = 0.039) result on a secondary observed-cases analysis, but a nonsignificant (p = 0.38) result on the primary efficacy analysis defined a priori. The third study was clearly negative, with p-values of 0.33 and 0.57 on the primary and secondary analyses, respectively.

Bottom line?  Always try to find out who did the study, and who funded it. If it is the company that MAKES the drug - be very careful whom you believe!