 |
 |
|
|
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will launch a three-year, $4.3 million study next spring of the popular herbal antidepressant St. John’s Wort—the first clinical trial of the herb in the United States.
The study is being sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), and the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), all part of NIH. It will involve 336 patients with "moderate" forms of clinical depression, according to information from NIMH. The trial will be coordinated by Jonathan Davidson, M.D., at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.
St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) has been used as an antidepressant in Europe for many years, but only recently, amid much publicity, has it gained a following in the U.S. In August 1996 the British Medical Journal published a meta-analysis of 23 European clinical studies, concluding that the herb was useful in cases of "mild to moderate" depression. A number of the studies involved comparisons with tricyclic antidepressants.
"Depression is a serious and sometimes fatal medical illness, and we must be sure that the treatments people receive have been proven to be effective," said NIMH Director Steven Hyman, M.D., in a statement released by that agency.
"The study will be the first rigorous clinical trial of [St. John’s Wort] that will be large enough and long enough to fully assess whether it produces a therapeutic effect."
The study will randomly assign one-third of the 336 depressed patients to a group receiving 900 milligrams of a standardized extract of the herb. Another third will receive a placebo, and the remaining third will receive the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor sertraline hydrochloride, sold under the brand name Zoloft.