Response in Relation to Baseline Anxiety Levels in Major Depressive Disorder Treated with Bupropion Sustained Release or Sertraline

Does Pretreatment Insomnia or Anxiety Predict Acute Response to Bupropion SR?

“…These findings are in substantial agreement with other reports that baseline anxiety levels and antidepressant response to bupropion SR were not related (11,12,16). Other studies with fluoxetine (13,15,29,30), paroxetine (30), sertraline (30), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), or tricyclic antidepressants (17) mirror these findings.…”

“…This lack of relationship between baseline anxiety and the likelihood of achieving clinically significant anxiolysis is consistent with Rush et al (12). However, the time to significant anxiolysis was also slightly longer (4-7 days) for those with higher baseline anxiety.…”

“…In fact, the APA Guidelines (7) suggest that bupropion may be anxiogenic and should be avoided in anxious depressed patients (10). However, these common clinical beliefs are largely unsupported by the available studies (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17).…”

Recent advances in animal models of chronic antidepressant effects: The novelty-induced hypophagia test

“…Although SSRIs are the class of antidepressant prescribed most often for the treatment of anxiety disorders due to their more favorable side-effect profile, virtually all classes of compounds used to treat depression also reduce anxiety, including SSRIs (Antony, 1997;Zohar and Westenberg, 2000;Sheehan and Mao, 2003), tricyclics (Zohar and Westenberg, 2000;Sheehan and Mao, 2003;Kalus et al, 1991;Katon, 1986), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) (Katon, 1986;Jann and Kurtz, 1987), 'new generation' mixed norepinephrine and serotonin reuptake inhibitors (Sheehan and Mao, 2003;Papp et al, 1998;Pollack et al, 1996), and atypical antidepressants including bupropion Rush et al, 2001) and trazodone (Mavissakalian et al, 1987). Therefore, studies investigating the mechanism of the antidepressant response may shed light onto the neurobiology of anxiety and/or depression.…”

Critical Thinking about Adverse Drug Effects: Lessons from the Psychology of Risk and Medical Decision-Making for Clinical Psychopharmacology

“…Clinicians believe that it makes more intuitive sense to give a ‘sedating’ antidepressant rather than a ‘stimulating’ antidepressant to an anxious patient who is not sleeping. Yet, neither insomnia nor anxiety predicts response to bupropion compared to sertraline [51,52,53,54]. …”