The depression drug Prozac failed to help patients with anorexia nervosa maintain their weight in the largest drug study ever conducted for the condition.
The research may alter treatment for anorexia, an eating disorder marked by severe weight loss and a distorted body image affecting as many as 2 percent of U.S. women.
Doctors often will prescribe antidepressants to prevent a relapse after patients regain some weight.
The new findings dispute the practice. Only 26.5 percent of 93 women given Eli Lilly & Co.’s Prozac maintained their weight and stayed in the trial for the full year, compared with 31.5 percent given a placebo.
There was no difference in the length of time the patients went before they started to lose weight.
“Doctors who have been prescribing medication for patients in hopes that it would dramatically affect the course of illness should move on to other things,” said B. Timothy Walsh, lead researcher and professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.
“At the moment, there is no evidence that any medication is of substantial benefit for patients with anorexia nervosa, period,” Walsh said, adding that doctors now “should put more emphasis on making sure patients are getting good psychological care and keep an eye on their nutritional state.”
The National Institutes of Health paid for the study, which appears in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. Indianapolis-based Lilly supplied the Prozac and matching placebo pills.
Walsh is also director of the eating disorders research unit at New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City.
