Prozac use for childhood depression skewed by single flawed medical trial
8 hours ago
- A single 2006 clinical trial in Iran involving 40 children may have wrongly influenced evidence for using Prozac to treat pediatric depression, according to researchers.
- The trial reported an implausibly large effect size for Prozac over nortriptyline, with suspiciously uniform score changes across participants and no ethics approval description.
- Excluding this trial from meta-analyses causes Prozac's apparent benefits to disappear, highlighting how a single flawed 'zombie trial' can corrupt medical evidence.
- Researchers call for guideline committees to review their recommendations, but do not urge clinicians to stop prescribing Prozac.
- The Cochrane group now has protocols to identify untrustworthy trials; authors of previous meta-analyses acknowledge the 2006 data are problematic but lacked such protocols earlier.