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Ongoing pharmacotherapy maintains quality of life benefits in older adults with major depression

Charles F Reynolds III

Correspondence to: Charles F Reynolds III, MD, WPIC (E1135), 3811 O’Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA; reynoldscf@upmc.edu

QUESTION
Question:
Does continuing treatment with combined paroxetine and interpersonal psychotherapy sustain health-related quality of life benefits?

Patients:
116 people aged 70 years and older who had been diagnosed with major depression, which had responded to treatment with paroxetine and interpersonal psychotherapy. Initially 195 older adults with non-psychotic DSM-IV major depression and 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD-17) score 15 and Mini-Mental State Examination score 17 were recruited and treated with paroxetine and interpersonal psychotherapy. The 151 people who responded (3 consecutive weeks with HRSD-17 score 10) continued to received open treatment for 16 weeks. The 116 people who did not relapse during this period entered the maintenance phase.

Setting:
University-based clinic for treatment of major depression in old age; recruitment March 1999 to February 2003.

Intervention:
Maintenance treatment with: paroxetine plus clinical . . . [Full text of this article]

Muthu K R Natarajan,, John R Geddes

Speciality Registrar, General Adult Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, UK
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, UK