EiR Blog

A study conducted at the Mayo Clinic and published this week in the January issue of The American Journal of Gastroenterology has found that the popular antidepressant herbal supplement St. John's wort is unhelpful for those suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). In a press release the lead researcher on the study, Yuri Saito, M.D., M.P.H., said that "Several of the chemical neurotransmitters that are in the brain are also in the colon. Therefore, it's been thought that antidepressants may affect sensation in the colon in a similar way to how they affect sensation in the brain. Our goal was to evaluate the usefulness of St John's wort in treating IBS." In discussing the outcome of the study Saito said "Because people tend to struggle with IBS for several years, patients are really looking for inexpensive, over-the-counter treatments such as St. John's wort. Unfortunately, our study showed that St. John's...

You may have seen in the news media this week that new research suggests antidepressant drugs may damage men's sperm and increase the risk of infertility. Researchers from Cornell Medical Center in New York found that some men given the common SSRI antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat) for four weeks had far higher levels of sperm with damaged DNA. Experts say this does not necessarily mean these men would have more trouble becoming fathers but that it was certainly a cause for concern. So here we have another reason to look for alternatives to the antidepressant drugs which are prescribed to many millions of people every year. Earlier this year it was revealed that drug companies had buried studies showing that these drugs are largely ineffective in all but the most severe cases of depression. Before that paroxetine was linked to an increased risk of suicide. In a previous blog I...

 There has been a flurry of media activity in the UK this week after researchers from the University of Hull published a study showing that for mild to moderate depression antidepressant drugs show no clinically significant benefit over placebo. In other words they are pretty much useless. It turns out that pharmaceutical companies have been 'selectively reporting' studies on the effectiveness