1 Boring Old Man

I had a ‘loose end’ from all that looking at the STAR*D study that I was reminded of thinking about "souped up" antidepressants – the CO-MED study that was to follow STAR*D. It was to be a clinical trial where they compared people started on one of a variety of antidepressants to people started on two antidepressants – the list was Wellbutrin, LexaPro, Remeron, and Effexor [a Butyrophenone, an SSRI, a Tetracyclic Antidepressant, and an SNRI respectively]. It’s actually a study I was curious about because I see people in the clinic on combinations of antidepressants all the time [probably started with little more thought than "let’s try this"]. The CO-MED Trial was funded by the NIMH in 2007, started in 2008, and due to end in September 2009. The Principle Investigator, John Rush [also P.I. on STAR*D] left abruptly for Singapore in September 2008 and was replaced as P.I. by his UT colleague Madhukar Trivedi on 12/31/2008. The Clinical Trial was recorded as no longer recruiting in February 2009 and as completed in February 2010. The reason for all the details is that  it was uncharacteristically very hard to find this study in the NIH RePORTER [usually easy to use] – and once found, the information was often not updated or absent. The other odd thing is that after STAR*D with a gajillion publications, you’d expect we might have heard something from CO-MED. But so far, nada [even though John Rush has been a listed author on 65 articles in PubMed since January 2009]. Here’s what I found: