\nKaren Wagner on Treating Kids With Antidepressants <\/a><\/div>\nFiddamans blog<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\nby Bob Fiddaman<\/div>\nJanuary 31, 2014<\/div>\n[full text on-line<\/a>] <\/div>\nYou’d have to be from the planet Zog if you didn’t know who Karen Wagner was.<\/p>\n
Her name is synonymous with antidepressant pediatric studies. She added her name to the Paxil 329 ghostwritten paper without actually looking at the raw data [which showed an increased rate of suicidal thoughts in kids taking Paxil] – The result of that piece of Pharmafia fraud told millions of prescribing physicians that Paxil was safe to use in children and adolescents…when in actual fact it wasn’t. Wagner has been relentless to disprove those who believe antidepressant use in kids is wrong. She sees no problem with it…despite overwhelming evidence that shows just how dangerous antidepressant use in kids can be.<\/p>\n
An article published in Clinical Psychiatry News<\/font><\/strong> [Treating youngsters’ depression means going off the FDA grid<\/span><\/a>] a couple of days ago shows Wagner, once again, promoting the use of SSRi medication in children and adolescents. Wagner was present at a psychopharmacology update held by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry where she claimed that "…60% of youngsters will respond favorably to their first antidepressant medication – generally a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)"<\/em> Wagner also went on to claim that Switching to a different antidepressant will help about 50% of those who don’t respond. But adding psychotherapy will grab about 10% more – bringing the total response rate up to around 70%". She was referring to a 2008 study, TORDIA [Treatment of Resistant Depression in Adolescents]. <\/p>\n
So, Wagner hits the stage at these types of events, she’s a key opinion leader, in other words, those employed in the same field as her look up to her, respect her, hang on to her every word. She is the Geldof of the pop world, pushing her message at every given opportunity. Quite why she sticks her middle finger up at evidence that shows kids kill themselves whilst on these drugs kind of alarms me.<\/p>\n
So, is Wagner on a mission to help depressed children and teens, does she genuinely care about this population or are there more sinister undertones? It would help if she and the article published in Clinical Psychiatry News<\/font><\/strong> was actually more transparent about her relationship and financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry [Pharmafia]. Upon reading the article I had to do a double take at the end… "Dr. Wagner has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies"…<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nAs you can see, Fid’s not very taken with Karen Wagner [nor am I]. She has only one message, one that she’s preached forever. And this is it. Her industry connections are legend and well covered in the rest of Fid’s blog post. In the piece in Clinical Psychiatry News<\/a>, they report further down that she says:<\/div>\n\nVenlafaxine is one of many antidepressants that are not approved for use in children and teens. Treating depression in youngsters almost always means off-label prescribing. Only two antidepressants – fluoxetine and escitalopram – are Food and Drug Administration–approved for children and teens, and only fluoxetine is approved for children younger than 12 years. And data are actually mixed about fluoxetine; a recent published study showed it was no different from placebo over 6 months. Of the older, more well-known antidepressants, only two have positive data for youngsters. One randomized study of citalopram posted positive findings for its primary endpoint [American Journal of Psychiatry 2004;161:1079-83<\/a>]. The other is sertraline, which had positive overall findings in a pooled analysis, although the individual studies were negative [JAMA 2003;290:1033-41]<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt is lost on no one that the two studies of "the older, more well-known antidepressants<\/em>" that she reports as positive are studies she, Karen Wagner, did. I wasn’t impressed with either [clinically insignificant study…<\/a>, tuning the quartet…<\/a>]. <\/div>\n\nStudies on all of the other drugs were negative, including mirtazapine [two studies], nefazodone [two], paroxetine [three], and venlafaxine [two].<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n