Antidepressants lack evidence for treating chronic pain, says Cochrane

Most antidepressants used for chronic pain are being prescribed with insufficient evidence of their effectiveness, a Cochrane review has found.1Of the most commonly used antidepressants studied—including amitriptyline, fluoxetine, citalopram, paroxetine, sertraline, and duloxetine—researchers found that only the latter showed some evidence for pain relief. But the evidence for long term efficacy was lacking as the average length of the studies was 10 weeks.Lead author Tamar Pincus, from the University of Southampton, said, “Our review found no reliable evidence for the long term efficacy of any antidepressant, and no reliable evidence for their safety for chronic pain at any point.“Although we found that duloxetine provided short term pain relief for the patients we studied, we remain concerned about possible long term harm because of gaps in the current evidence.”Pincus worked with researchers from several UK universities to examine 176 randomised controlled trials of antidepressants for chronic pain conditions, involving a total…
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