Sabooh Sultan Mubbashar, Ijaz ur Rahman, Khalid Saeed.
An open non-comparative study of sertraline in patients with major depression presenting to a tertiary care setting..
Pak J Med Res Jan ;39(2):61-5.

This is an open non comparative study of efficacy and tolerability of 5- HT uptake inhibitor sertraline on patients suffering from depressive illness presenting to out patient department of Institute of psychiatry Rawalpindi. 32 patients were enrolled into the study that fulfilled DSM-III R criteria for major depression and had a minimum score of 18 on 17 item Hamilton rating scale for depression HAM-D. A detailed history and physical examination was carried out to rule out the possibility of concurrent physical illness. The patients were given treatment for a period of ten weeks and assessment was carried out at fortnightly intervals using HAM-D, Clinical Global Impression severity and improvement scales (CGI), Adverse events report, and patient ratings of health status and depression health profile questionnaire. No adverse events were experienced by any of the patients and HAM-D scores showed a consistent improvement from week 04 onwards along with CGI scores on severity and improvement scales. The baseline mean score of HAM-D was 25.7% and at the end of 10 weeks its was 11.5% while on CGI scales improvement was seen in 81.2% of patients on severity scales and 71.8% patients on improvement scales. On the patient rated measures of health status and satisfaction with quality of life 90.6% and 71.8% patients recorded significant improvement respectively. It can be concluded that this study provides evidence for short-term efficacy and tolerability of sertraline however these results need to be interpreted cautiously in light of potential sources of bias introduced because of a relatively less robust design.

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