Zoloft, a commonly prescribed antidepressant, is effective for treating moderate to severe depression in children and adolescents, researchers reported today.
The study, the largest to test one of the antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, in children, found that 69 percent of the subjects who took the drug improved significantly, compared with 59 percent of those who took a dummy pill, a difference that some experts termed modest.
In the report, which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers concluded that Zoloft, made by Pfizer, "is an effective and well-tolerated short-term treatment" for depressed children and adolescents.
"This study is both statistically and clinically significant," said Dr. Karen Dineen Wagner, the director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and the lead author of the study. "The medication was effective."
Other experts said the study was important in adding to the limited knowledge about the effects SSRIs, which are increasingly prescribed for a variety of childhood mental disorders, have on young patients. The experts said the findings indicated that Zoloft had an effect. But they added that the 10 percent improvement afforded by the drug over the placebo wasn't substantial.