And Major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder or MDD is the most common major mental illness, afflicting almost one in five individuals. More than 75% of people who recover from an episode of MDD will have at least one recurrence, with the majority having multiple recurrences. Major depressive disorder is the leading cause of disability of all medical illnesses, with substantial functional impairment, morbidity, and mortality. Few studies have assessed the efficacy of antidepressant medications beyond 1 year of maintenance treatment for the prevention of recurrent depression.

The investigators randomly assigned patients with recurrent depression to receive treatment with either venlafaxine extended-release (ER) or fluoxetine, an antidepressant already established as efficacious as a comparative medication. Although the PREVENT study followed patients for over two years, this article reports only on the acute and continuation phases, which were 10 weeks and 6 months long respectively.

The authors found that nearly 80% of the patients achieved at least an adequate therapeutic response to acute phase treatment with venlafaxine ER or fluoxetine, and almost none of the responders who continued on treatment for 6 months relapsed.

In addition to the high response rates by the patients in this study, the rates of adverse events (side effects) were similar among the two treatment groups