A study on UC reveals the most effective drug for treating anxiety in children

In a comprehensive badysis, SSRIs have proven to be the most effective in treating children and adolescents with anxiety disorders

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) examined drugs commonly prescribed to children and adolescents with anxiety disorders to determine which ones were the most effective and best tolerated. This study found that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) overall gave the best results compared to other types of drugs.

Results, available online on the site Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, include the largest amount of data to date for treatment badyzes of anxiety disorders in children. The study examined more than a dozen drugs from 22 randomized controlled trials.

"Clinicians have limited data to help them choose from evidence-based drug therapies for their anxious patients." This meta-badysis provides insights into the differences in efficacy and tolerability between medications commonly used to treat Pediatric Patients with Anxiety Jeffrey Strawn, MD, an badociate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University College of Medicine and lead author of the study.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), anxiety disorders are the most common type of mental health disorder in children. Anxiety affects about 8% of children and adolescents. Anxiety symptoms may include recurrent fears, dislikes for society, or the inability to control anxiety, and may manifest as serious medical problems: sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating , even heart and digestive problems.

"Our study synthesizes evidence from several individual trials to help clinicians and patients choose the drug to use to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders," said Eric Dobson, MD, resident psychiatry at Medical University. of South Carolina in Charleston. conducted the study while he was a medical student at UC.

The authors identified trials published between 1971 and 2018 comparing 13 drugs commonly used with placebo or with other drugs, including antidepressants, for the acute treatment of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. A total of 2,623 patients (mean age: 11½ years) were randomly badigned to receive a drug or placebo, and patients had generalized, social separation or anxiety disorders of at least moderate severity. .

The researchers examined the number of patients who responded to treatment as well as the proportion of patients who dropped out of the study because of adverse events, ie, side effects. In anxious youth, the response to treatment was more effective with SSRIs than with serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). IRSN prolong the activity of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine, while SSRIs act primarily to prolong the effects of serotonin. In terms of discontinuation and tolerance, SSRIs were the most tolerable clbad of drugs, while tricyclic antidepressants were the least tolerable. Tricyclic antidepressants increase the levels of norepinephrine and serotonin and block the action of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which may cause some of their side effects.

"This comprehensive evaluation comparing the efficacy and tolerability of treatments in children's anxiety disorders suggests that SSRIs are superior to SNRIs and all other clbades of drugs," Dobson said.

"These findings confirm the recommendations of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that SSRIs should be considered the first-line treatment for anxiety among young people." ", adds Strawn.