The antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft) can help relieve the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), even in people who have suffered with the condition for many years, according to results of a study.
"This is really the largest and most convincing study that tells us that there is a medication that can treat PTSD," the study's lead author, Dr. Kathleen Brady, of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, told Reuters Health. "We now have an established medical treatment."
According to Brady, sertraline is the only prescription medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of the disorder.
Often thought of as a condition that mainly affects soldiers returning home from war, PTSD also strikes people who have experienced other traumatic events, such as natural disasters, physical and sexual assault and car crashes, as well as those who have witnessed violent acts. Signs of the disorder include flashbacks, emotional numbing, irritability and difficulty concentrating.
In the study, Brady and her colleagues compared sertraline to a placebo ('dummy') pill in 187 patients with PTSD. After a 2-week period during which all participants took the placebo, the patients were randomly assigned to receive sertraline or placebo for 12 weeks. Over time, the dose of sertraline was increased if needed.
Treatment with sertraline was more effective than the placebo at relieving symptoms, the investigators report in the April 12th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Symptoms improved in 53% of participants taking the drug, compared with 32% of patients taking placebo.
"This is a very disabling illness," Brady said. Sertraline therapy was associated not only with improvement in symptoms, but also in quality of life, she added. According to Brady, patients said that they were enjoying their lives more than they did before treatment.
In the report, the authors note that the benefits of the treatment are "particularly impressive," since the average length of time with PTSD was more than 10 years.
Brady suggested that additional research is needed to determine the best way to use the drug to treat PTSD. In particular, it will be important to see which people with PTSD will benefit from a combination of medication and psychotherapy and which ones will improve most using one treatment or the other.
Zoloft's manufacturer, New York-based Pfizer Inc., funded the study, and several of the researchers are affiliated with or own stock in the company.
