Light therapy and fluoxetine comparable for winter depression
Last Updated: 2006-05-01 12:23:53 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Aside from some differences in response onset and adverse event rates, light therapy and fluoxetine are equally effective treatments for winter depression, the most common type of seasonal affective disorder, Canadian researchers report.
The current study is not the first to evaluate these therapies as treatment for winter depression, yet few have directly compared the two, lead author Dr. Raymond W. Lam from the Mood Disorders Center in Vancouver, British Columbia, and colleagues note.
As reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry for May, the researchers assessed the outcomes of 96 patients who were randomized to receive light therapy (10,000 lux) plus a placebo capsule or placebo light therapy (100 lux) plus fluoxetine (20 mg/day) for 8 weeks. The light therapy was given for 30 minutes each morning using a fluorescent white-light box.
Light therapy and fluoxetine provided significant and comparable improvements in depressive symptoms, the report indicates. The clinical response rate in each group was 67%, while the remission rates hovered around 52%.
Further analysis indicated that light therapy provided a quicker initial improvement, but after 1 week, no differences were seen between the groups.
Although both treatments were well tolerated with a comparable number of side effects, treatment-emergent adverse events, including agitation and sleep disturbance, were more common with fluoxetine than with light therapy.
"This study gives patients with a common, but significantly debilitating mood disorder a choice between two effective treatments," Dr. Robert Freedman, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, said in a statement.
The researchers note that an ongoing analysis of data from the present study should shed light on the factors that predict which therapy is most likely to be beneficial in a particular patient.
Am J Psychiatry 2006;163:805-812.
