Posted by jrbecker on February 10, 2003, at 0:10:41
In reply to Re: another question on gepirone, posted by Stan on February 9, 2003, at 22:41:02
Stan,
your cynicism is most likely shared by all of us in terms of gepirone being anyting more than a step above buspar. Fortunately, this is most likley not the case though. I myself participated in a gepirone trial a while back. It was most likely, however, that I got administered the placebo (I think we've all taken enough drugs to be cognizant of their effects).
While in the trial I did have the chance to talk in detail with the researchers in the study (Quitkin, Stewart, and McGrath). And in doing two separate trials for the drug already, they are fairly certain of its extreme effectiveness for the atypical features of depression. They believe it will most have more commonality with the SSRIs than with Buspar itself. McGrath even went so far to say that the mood effects might outmatch most SSRIs (I am reserving judgment of this statement until I try it myself though). However, it should be noted that the reason gepirone has had so much problems with the FDA is because of the results of its first trial which matched geprione against placebo and prozac. Gepirone performed very well, yet the prozac did not, thus it was somewhat of a failed trial. This is because in drug trials, the standard drug of comparison, which is prozac in this case, needs to perform well also, or the trial drug (gepirone) can't be deemed an effective AD. Unfortunately, prozac is not a great candidate in treating atypical depression to begin with so the study ran into some obvious methodological issues.
The current study is testing gepirone against paxil and placebo. And they hope to have similar success with this trial, but without the same methodoligical issues as the last one.
Time will only tell how gepirone will perform once on the market. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait about a year and a half to find that out.
JB
poster:jrbecker
thread:139984
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030208/msgs/140391.html