Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 93 posts

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#41

Post by WizzleKake »

throwaway98031 wrote: post #26

This is an egregious violation on many levels. It highlights a massive gap in the clinical trials process (companies can stop trials without reporting negative results) that really should be addressed. I think everyone (outside of drug companies) can agree on that much. I would like to say a few words on SSRIs (the class of drugs that Paxil is in) and their risks in general, because articles like these tend to cultiv…

> restoration of brain connectivity back to a state that more closely matches that of non-depressed patients.

Do you have a source for this?

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#42

Post by seiji »

phkahler wrote: post #17
buffoon wrote: post #2

My wife was nearly a victim of this particular drug in the late 1990s. They have no idea how much shit they caused people by withholding this information. Several years of people's lives destroyed. I doubt they will acknowledge it or even apologise let alone offer compensation. When I say they, I don't mean the faceless corporation or brand, but the individuals who made this decision, ran the initial trials and pushe…

>> When I say they, I don't mean the faceless corporation or brand, but the individuals who made this decision... Hopefully they're scared shitless right now because of the talk around the GM recall case. Politicians are throwing around the idea of criminal charges because they didn't disclose safety problems soon enough. My first thought was "what about pharma?" Not sure what I think of the idea, but some folks in p…

Medical problems are difficult to class action because they are so distributed and so private.

Earlier this year a doctor killed a family member of mine by telling her, across multiple visits in the same week, her swollen ankle was a sprain and to just rest. It was actually a blood clot due to being overweight and on birth control pills. The day after her last visit, she threw a PE and died alone on her couch.

Another doctor told another family member his chest pains were end-stage cancer and he would die within a month. A second opinion showed it was mesothelioma treatable by state-of-the-art radiotherapy delivered by only one lab in the country. He's still alive two years later.

I've probably got another half dozen stories just from immediate relatives about doctors seemingly doing random or nonsensical things instead of driving proper diagnoses and/or treatments forward.

Doctors are in general awful unless you can afford to buy an entire private "council of doctors" to consult and berate each other into actually getting shit done.

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#43

Post by peterwwillis »

cs2818 wrote: post #10

Wow, I was prescribed Paxil as a teenager for a year or so. Glad the only side effect I experienced was weight gain.

I remember being on it too. But i'm not sure if my problems in school were related to this drug, or the many other drugs I was put on in the course of trying to discover a "cure" for being a lonely sad teenager. (They never ended up finding a 'fix' for me, and by 18 I was an adult and could finally refuse the medication)

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#44

Post by DanBC »

function_seven wrote: post #38
DanBC wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

marincounty just uses a lot of question marks. Your nasty attack is incorrect, and you should probably apologise.

I'm sorry, but one can't "just use a lot of question marks" without completely destroying whatever meaning they're trying to get across. I don't give a rat's ass if someone confuses "their" with "there", or "it's" with "its". The meaning is entirely left intact. But ending every single sentence with a question mark is very confusing to the reader. I still have no idea if marincounty is agreeing with the parent, calli…

It helps if you read it in an Australian accent?

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#45

Post by mzs »

throwaway98031 wrote: post #26

This is an egregious violation on many levels. It highlights a massive gap in the clinical trials process (companies can stop trials without reporting negative results) that really should be addressed. I think everyone (outside of drug companies) can agree on that much. I would like to say a few words on SSRIs (the class of drugs that Paxil is in) and their risks in general, because articles like these tend to cultiv…

What an outstandingly good comment, thank you.

To add, my opinion is that true suicidal ideation can be misinterpreted as manipulation in teens by it being more common at that age. Taken together with less life experience and impulse control at that age the teen is less likely to cope effectively otherwise. But this is simply a personal observation, I hope research gets to real crux of the matter.

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#46

Post by throwaway98031 »

WizzleKake wrote: post #41
throwaway98031 wrote: post #26

This is an egregious violation on many levels. It highlights a massive gap in the clinical trials process (companies can stop trials without reporting negative results) that really should be addressed. I think everyone (outside of drug companies) can agree on that much. I would like to say a few words on SSRIs (the class of drugs that Paxil is in) and their risks in general, because articles like these tend to cultiv…

> restoration of brain connectivity back to a state that more closely matches that of non-depressed patients. Do you have a source for this?

Sure! Here is a somewhat recent study on the topic: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811911...

Some of these studies are difficult to interpret without the appropriate background, though, because it's easy to see phrases like "antidepressants decrease resting-state functional connectivity" and assume that decreasing functional connectivity in your brain is necessarily a bad thing. In reality, some types of depression might stem from detrimental alterations in functional connectivity in certain areas that are reversed by anti-depressants.

The most exciting aspect of these types of studies is that researchers are just starting to scratch the surface of being able to tailor antidepressant treatment to different types of depression.

This study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21205435 for example, found that resting state connectivity in certain areas was correlated with treatment outcome, suggesting that it might be possible to actually measure some of these things and prescribe medications that have a higher chance of working in a given patient.

Very exciting stuff!

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#47

Post by totalrobe »

mzs wrote: post #35
totalrobe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call it the "Bill O'Reilly". It's the either-or fallacy, also known as the false dilemma, and commonly employed by internet forum bullies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

I do not see marincounty being a bully in that comment, just some odd punctuation. This discussion is derailing from the topic at hand.

Guys, I did not say that marincounty was being a bully. Seems like you too are falling prey to the HASTY GENERALIZATION or maybe just a faulty correlation.

Just because some bullies use the false dilemma does not mean that marincounty is bully.

And agreed, we are definitely derailing from the topic.

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#48

Post by joesmo »

What? A drug company hiding the fact that its drugs don't work from the scientists assigned to oversee it to make billions of dollars? Why never would I have thought this possible! Seems like for this segment of the market, they could have saved billions by releasing a placebo with better effects. Amazing!

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#49

Post by throwaway98031 »

DanBC wrote: post #32

This study is more interesting. young people on certain anti-depressants are at higher risk of violence. We don't know which way causality runs. We don't see the effect in older people. http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou... > These findings show an association between SSRIs and violent crime that varies by age group. They cannot, however, prove that taking SSRIs actually causes an increase i…

The study is interesting and worth following up on, but the biggest takeaway from your post is your statement that:

> We don't know which way causality runs.

The study found a correlation, not a causation, and even the authors suggest that reverse causation is actually a very possible explanation.

Note that the study was performed in Sweden, where they do a much better job of rehabilitating offenders than we do in the USA. So good, in fact, that the reoffending rates in Sweden are half of other European countries. Sweden is actually closing prisons lately because their prison population is dropping so much.

I can't find any direct evidence to back this up, but it's not a stretch to think that young violent offenders in Sweden are much more likely than the general population to end up receiving psychiatric treatment, and thus are more likely to be prescribed SSRIs than the general population.

As such, I wouldn't read too much in that study.

Re: Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back

#50

Post by throwaway98031 »

acveilleux wrote: post #3

I use to work in pharma research (at the data acquisition and analysis side, blinded from treatment) and the fact that pharmas are able to start clinical trials and then shut them down without reporting result is a problem. The folks who make those decision usually have access to unblinded data and in the least objectionable case they do it due to lack of efficacy but you never know. Maybe they found a side-effect an…

> pharmas are able to start clinical trials and then shut them down without reporting result is a problem.

As you've worked in the industry, I'm curious: What do you think could remedy this situation?

Forcing all registered clinical trials to release all of their data seems like the obvious solution. We still need the ability to shut down clinical trials if unexpected side effects such as increased suicide rates appear, but allowing companies to keep the results private is obviously problematic.

Post reply on HN