Long-term maintenance treatment with desipramine appeared to be effective in preventing relapse of depression in patients who responded to the drug successfully during the acute treatment phase, say James H. Kocsis, M.D., and colleagues at New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center.

Their report on maintenance treatment of depression with desipramine appeared in the October Archives of General Psychiatry.

Of 53 patients entering maintenance therapy after successful initial treatment of depression with desipramine, 28 were randomly assigned to continue desipramine treatment and 25 were randomly assigned to taper off to a placebo.

Relapse rates were significantly higher for the placebo group (52 percent) compared with the group receiving desipramine (15 percent).

"If the maintenance-phase results are replicated and expanded in larger samples of patients with chronic depression treated with antidepressant medication, a major advance in clinical treatment of chronic depression will have been realized," Kocsis and colleagues write.

"From a practical standpoint, the 52 percent relapse rate seen during maintenance with placebo can be used by clinicians to set guidelines for patients who wish to discontinue taking medication after four months of treatment. Such patients will have about a 50 percent chance of relapse in the first six months after treatment."

The study is believed to be the first long-term controlled trial of maintenance antidepressant medication therapy for the prevention of relapse of chronic depression, according to Kocsis and colleagues.

(Psychiatric News, November 1, 1996)