Do I have bipolar disorder because my father had schizophrenia?

According to researchers at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may have common genetic causes. Researchers studied 9 million Swedish people during a 30-year period and discovered that "relatives of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder had an increased risk of both disorders." The study may also suggest that "the two conditions may simply be different manifestations of the same disease."

The article from Reuters also points out that Seroquel and Zyprexa are used to treat both disorders, which may lead people in the psychiatric industry to further investigate the link between the two illnesses. Here are some interesting discoveries from the study:

 *  First-degree relatives (parents, siblings, or offspring) of people with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were at increased risk for both of these conditions.

 * If a sibling had schizophrenia, full siblings were nine times more likely than the general population to have schizophrenia and four times more likely to have bipolar disorder.

 * If a sibling had bipolar disorder, they were eight times more likely to have bipolar disorder and four times more likely to have schizophrenia.

 * Half siblings who shared the same mother were 3.6 times more likely to have schizophrenia if their half sibling had schizophrenia and 4.5 times more likely to have bipolar disorder if their half sibling had bipolar disorder. Half siblings who shared the same father had a 2.7-fold increase in schizophrenia risk and a 2.4-fold increase in bipolar disorder.

 * Adopted children with a biological parent with one of the disorders had a significant increase in risk for the other.

Creepy. My father's schizophrenia didn't begin to manifest itself until he was in his 40s. The same is true for my two other aunts as well. It may be silly but I live in fear that I may have the same problem. I'll eventually get a psychiatric advance directive in place just in case that day ever comes. After seeing three family members with debilitating schizophrenia/paranoia, sometimes it gets to the point where the benefits of being drugged up outweigh the risks.

Mood rating: 6

Atypical Antipsychotics: Patient Safety Information

These documents are all in PDF form. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view them. Download Adobe Acrobat here.

• Aripiprazole (Abilify)

• Clozapine (Clozaril)

• Olanzapine (Zyprexa)

• Olanzapine-Fluoxetine (Symbyax)

• Quetiapine (Seroquel)

• Risperidone (Risperdal)

• Ziprasidone (Geodon)

If you prefer, you can view the Patient Safety Information in HTML at the official Food & Drug Administration website.

Study shows atypical antipsychotics pose a higher risk for cardiac arrest

The New York Times has reported that a recent study found atypical antipsychotics, which include the friendly family of Clozaril, Abilify, Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel (maybe Saphris soon), can increase a patient’s risk of dying from cardiac arrest twofold.

The study published in The New England Journal of Medicine also concluded that the risk of death from the psychotropic medications isn’t high. However, an editorial also published in the same issue “urged doctors to limit their prescribing of antipsychotic drugs, especially to children and elderly patients, who can be highly susceptible to the drugs’ side effects.”

A U.S. News & World Report article linked to the FDA’s atypical antipsychotics page for further patient information. If you’re on an atypical, I’d recommend reading each word in the patient safety info that applies to you. Proofreaders like me shouldn’t be the only ones tortured with reading all the fine print. *winks*

Eli Lilly settles with U.S. Gov't for $1.42 billion over illegal Zyprexa off-label marketing

Yes, you read that right. Eli Lilly has reached a settlement for $1.42 billion with the U.S. government over the illegal off-label marketing of Zyprexa. The company also pleaded guilty to criminal misdemeanor charges. Basically this is how I see it:

U.S. Gov’t: Eli Lilly, you did a bad, bad thing by doing illegal things. Pay a fine, please, and then you can go.

Eli Lilly: Okayyyy. [reluctantly hands over $1.42 billion to the government]

U.S. Gov’t: [slaps Eli Lilly on the hand] Now, don’t you ever, ever do this again!

It’s a record settlement for a whistleblowing case. According to Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons, Eli Lilly has paid over $2.7 billion in settlement payouts so far. (With certainly more to come.)

Analysis of "Depression: Out of the Shadows"

The show is essentially Depression 101 – for those new to learning
about the illness. As someone who struggles with depression (within
bipolar disorder), I found a lot of the two hours pretty boring (90
minutes on personal stories and about 22 minutes for "candid
conversation"). The "a lot" comes from the stuff that I've either heard before or flies over my head, eg, how depression affects the brain, prefrontal cortex, neurotransmitters, synapses, etc. The personal stories were powerful: depressingly heartwarming. (Yes, I mean that.)

My heart sank as I heard the stories of Emma and Hart, teenagers who were diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, respectively. Both were such extreme cases that they needed to be sent away for special psychiatric care. They are on medications for their disorders; the specific drugs are never mentioned.

While watching Deana's story of treatment-resistant depression, I instantly thought of Herb of VNSDepression.com whose wife suffers from the same malady.

I tried to listen attentively for the antidepressant that Ellie, who suffered from PPD after the birth of her first child, would be taking during her next pregnancy. It was never mentioned.

My jaw nearly dropped to the carpet as Andrew Solomon, carefully plucked brightly colored pills from his pillbox that he takes every morning for his unipolar depression: Remeron, Zoloft, Zyprexa, Wellbutrin, Namenda, Ranitidine, and two kinds of fish oil. He might have even mentioned Prozac. He takes Namenda, an Alzheimer's drug to combat the effects of an adverse interaction between Wellbutrin and one of the other drugs that I can't remember. Solomon says he's happy. I'm happy for him and I'm happy that his drug cocktail works for him but I couldn't help but sit there and wonder, "Isn't there a better way?"

While I thought the stories covered the gamut, in retrospect, I'm surprised they didn't interview a veteran or U.S. soldier to discuss PTSD. If the producers were able to fit in dysthymia, I'm sure they might have been able to throw in a story about a soldier who struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts stemming out of PTSD. Considering all the stories coming out of the VA, it's rather relevant. It would have been more interesting than the Jane Pauley segment. But I'll get to that in a minute.

As I listened to the narrator, I couldn't help but wonder what alternate perspectives could have popped up. For what it was, I fear none. This was a Depression 101 show — a program designed to either get people to fight against fear and stigma and get help or to open the eyes of loved ones to this debilitating disorder. I'm not sure how to slip in an opposing view on medication from a doctor without confusing or scaring people away. What would Healy or Breggin say that would encourage people to seek appropriate care?

Holistic or natural treatment was not mentioned. It's not mainstream and it's not recommended by most doctors as first-line therapy. I would have been surprised had something been said about it.

The depression portion of bipolar disorder was briefly discussed in Hart's story then Pauley added commentary about her personal experience in the remaining 22 minutes of the program.

Pauley appears at the end of the show promising a "candid conversation" on the topic. The three experts: Drs. Charney, Duckworth, and Primm sit and smile politely as Pauley rattles on occasionally about herself. Some people might find her exchange endearing and personal. After the first 3 minutes, I found it annoying. As a journalist, I wish she would have taken the impartial observer approach rather than the "intimate discussion" approach. In my opinion, she seemed to have dominated the "discussion."

It ended up being a Q&A with each doctor. Her questions were focused and direct. I expected a little bit of an exchange between doctors, talking not only about the pros of medication and treatment like ECT and VNS but also the cons. (Should I apologize for being optimistic?) Charney interjected into the conversation maybe once or twice but was only to offer an assenting opinion. Primm spoke least of everyone on the panel. I think she was placed on the show solely to represent diversity.

There were no "a recent study said…" or "critics say such-and-such, how do you address that?" It was a straightforward emphasis on encouraging people to get help or for those suffering to get treatment. Pauley's segment didn't discuss any negatives (not with the medical director of NAMI there!). The closest the entire 2 hours gets to any cons is with ECT shock treatment and giving medication to growing children. The childhood medication thing isn't dwelt on. The basic gist is: Doctors don't understand how medication works in children but are working on trying to understand it and improve its efficacy.

Forgive me for being negative. The point of the program was designed to give hope to those suffering. Instead, it just made me feel even worse. Thoughts raced through my head: "Well, if this doesn't work, then it's on to that. And if that medication doesn't work then I'll probably be prescribed this therapy, and if that doesn't work, then I'm treatment-resistant at which point, I'll have to do…"

I hope the program does what it's designed to do and that's to get those suffering with depression to seek appropriate care. The one upside is that talk therapy was stressed. I'm a huge proponent of talk therapy myself. Let me know what you thought of the show if you were able to catch it.

In the meantime, this depressed girl is going to cure herself for the night by going to bed.

P.S. Is it really fact that depression is a disease?

Response to "Mental Health Blogs Going Bye-Bye?"

From one of Furious Seasons’s latest posts:

Mental Health Blogs Going Bye-Bye?

As I noted earlier, there’s a spate of mental health blogs that are going on hiatus of some kind. Now, it’s my sad duty to report that Gianna Kali’s Bipolar Blast blog is going on an indefinite hiatus as well. You can read her post "Quitting?" for the details. Bottom line: all those years of very high doses of psych meds seem to have injured her body. I cannot even begin to send her enough good wishes. I cannot even begin to express my disgust with some of the bad doctors she ran into over the years.

Also, the Psych Survivor blog, written by a man I only know as Mark, was taken down a few weeks ago, and from what I gather he is in the hospital with heart problems. His was/is a good and strident voice on these issues we all care about and his work is missed.

All of this kind of makes me feel glum, since the two people above had been at the blogging game for well over a year and I sensed that they’d both be around long-term. These are people I care about and it sucks that they won’t be the presence they once were.

Why is it that mental health blogs are so difficult to do and keep going? Why is it so hard for them to find the substantial audiences they deserve? The Internet is crowded with blogs about politics, technology, gadgets, gossip and parenting and many of these seem to do quite well and have huge audiences and long lives, despite the fact that many of them are merely echoes of one another. Are readers of blogs that simple-minded that all they need is the latest news and opinion on Apple’s or Microsoft’s latest bit of software or Obama’s or Hillary’s latest gaffe?

You’d think in a country where 10 percent of the population is on anti-depressants and another 5 percent to 10 percent is likely on some other psych med that there would be a substantial audience for these issues (regardless of what one makes of the dominant mental health paradigm), especially given how wildly popular neuroscience is on the Net. It makes me wonder if we all–and here I include myself–have done something wrong in how we analyze these issues (are we too contrarian?) or if we all simply haven’t been crowded out of the big search engines (that’s how most people find mental health information online) because the Net is so over-populated with pharma sites and allied pro-pharma health websites. I can certainly say that the mainstream media–which usually loves writing about characters on the Net who push against life’s many intellectual tides–has given very little attention to sites like this one, despite the fact that sites like mine have been a very real service to many in the media.

Or maybe the mainstream approach to mental health care is right and the public is just trying to tell us something.

What do you think?

I’ll tell you what I think.

Alaska's "clinical" trial of Eli Lilly over Zyprexa

Since I've been gone, a trial has begun in Alaska against Eli Lilly because of its off-label drug marketing of Zyprexa. Then, Connecticut recently decided to join a growing list of states going after Lilly as a result of the Zyprexa deal. There is so much going on with this case I can't even keep up.

But that's what we keep Philip Dawdy around for. 🙂

Blogs around the way

I’m catching up on reading my fellow bloggers’ posts (see Blogroll to the right), so if you’re not reading their site already, I’d encourage you to do so. Below  are some posts that caught my attention. Some might be a little dated.

Gianna at Bipolar Blast: Has a video up of Gwen Olsen, an ex-pharma rep who says that pharmaceutical companies aren’t in the  business of curing but in the business of "disease maintenance and symptom management." It’s nothing new but here are two quotes that caught my attention:

"And what I’m saying is provable is that the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t want to cure people. You need to understand specifically when we’re talking about psychiatric drugs in particular that these are drugs that encourage people to remain customers of the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, you will be told if you’re given a drug such as an anxiolytic, or an antidepressant, or an antipsychotic drug, that you may be on the drug for the rest of your life. And very frequently, people find that they are on the drug for a very long period of time, if not permanently, because they’re almost impossible to get off of. Some of them can have very serious withdrawal symptoms – most of them can have extremely serious withdrawal symptoms if they’re stopped cold turkey – but some people experience even withdrawal symptoms when they try to titrate or they try to eliminate the drug little by little, day after day."

"We have got to start making the pharmaceutical industry accountable for their actions and for the defective products they’re putting on the market. It won’t be long before every American is affected by this disaster and we need to be aware of what the differences are between diseases between disorders and between syndromes. Because if it doesn’t have to be scientifically proven, if there are no tests, if there are no blood tests, CAT scans, urine tests, MRIs – if there is nothing to document that you have disease, then you in fact, do not have a disease, you have a disorder and it has been given and has been diagnosed pretentiously and you need to get yourself educated and understand that there are options and those options are much more effective than drugs."

I’ve always wondered why doctors don’t run tests to diagnose any psychiatric disorders. From NIMH:

Research indicates that depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain. Brain-imaging technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have shown that the brains of people who have depression look different than those of people without depression. The parts of the brain responsible for regulating mood, thinking, sleep, appetite and behavior appear to function abnormally. In addition, important neurotransmitters–chemicals that brain cells use to communicate–appear to be out of balance. But these images do not reveal why the depression has occurred.

If MRIs have shown that the people with depression have a part of the brain that functions abnormally then why isn’t it standard for all people diagnosed with depression to have an MRI done to confirm this? I have one of two hypotheses:  it’s too expensive to get an MRI done for each person and that insurance won’t pay for it or the abnormal functioning cannot be detected in the brain of every depressed person.  Therefore, is major depressive disorder really a made-up diagnosis?

Hirschfeld developed MDQ for GSK

“GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical healthcare companies, is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better, and live longer.”

OK, I’ll be honest. I can’t keep up with my own posts and have no idea whether or not I’ve posted on this yet. Judging from the fact that I still have this bp booklet, I’m going to guess not. If I have, then there’s more.

When my psychiatrist diagnosed me with bipolar disorder in November, he handed me a bunch of material: a mood tracker (PDF), an article touting the benefits of Seroquel, and a booklet titled, “Bipolar Disorder,” which refers the reader to www.1on1.health.com.

The booklet seems pretty harmless to a patient newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder:

“Highs and lows can be part of life. But, with bipolar disorder, they can be severe. You may feel too depressed to get out of bed one day. Soon after, you may feel full of energy. You may have normal times between the highs and lows. When people have mood symptoms, it’s more likely to be depression.

Mood swings can be hard to predict. But you may have warning signs. You may even learn what can trigger your symptoms. You’ll read about this and more in this booklet.

Bipolar disorder is complex. Doctors docn’t know what causes it. They know that genes play a role. The illness may be linked to brain chemicals. These chemicals can get out of balance.

There are treatments to help control the symptoms. Learn about your condition. Get help for it. This booklet is a good first step.”

Thank you, GlaxoSmithKline.

GSK, the provider of such psych drugs as Lamictal, Paxil, and Wellbutrin, issues a series of booklets for patients referring them to 1on1health.com. The topics include depression, anxiety disorders, epilepsy, type 2 diabetes mellitus, high cholesterol, among others. The tips seems pretty simple and straightforward:

“Health and lifestyle chances may trigger your symptoms. Some common changes are:

Not having a sleep schedule
Misusing alcohol or drugs
Stopping your medicine, or starting medicine for depression or another illness
Having thyroid or other health problems”

Then it gets into the general stuff about the difference between mania, depression and further clarifies what hypomania and mixed moods are. Then, the kicker follows:

“If you think you may have bipolar disorder, fill out the checklist on the next two pages. Share it with your doctor. He or she can use it to help diagnose you.”

Furious Seasons posted a link about a fake drug named Havidol (which I totally got suckered into because I skimmed the post and missed the “OK, it’s a gag” part), but the hilarity stems from similarly stupid (and vague) questions. I’ve put a screenshot of the PDF GSK provides on their Web site to the right. My issue is not so much with the questions necessarily, but with the lead-in to them:

“Has there been a time when...” [emphasis mine]

It doesn’t matter whether you were 3 years old or 46 years old, if you answered “yes” to more than one “there’s ever been a time when” question, guess what? You MAY qualify for bipolar disorder! A sampling:

Has there ever been a time when…

• You were easily angered that you shouted at people or started fights?
• You felt much more sure of yourself than usual?
• You talked or spoke much faster than usual?
• You were so easily distracted that you couldn’t focus?
• You had much more energy than usual?
• You were much more active or did many more things than usual?
• You were much more social than usual?
• You were much more interested in sex than usual?

Guaranteed everyone reading this said “yes” to at least TWO questions. If not, I question whether you’re breathing. (Sadly enough, this makes me realize how easy it was for me to get fooled by the phony Havidol quiz.)

The follow-up to the questions above asks, “If you checked YES to more than one of the questions above, have several of these things happened during the same period of time?” Then, “How much of a problem did any of these things cause you (like not being able to work, or having money or legal troubles)? Choose one[:]

1. No problem
2. Minor problem
3. Moderate problem
4. Serious problem”

The multiple choice question above may not matter. Answering some of the lead-in questions in the affirmative may qualify you for the disorder.

Here’s a nice little tidbit. The questionnaire was “adapted with permission from Robert M.A. Hirschfeld, M.D.” So as an uninformed patient reading this (which I was at the time), I’m thinking, “Oh, this must be legit since they got permission from a doctor to use this checklist.” There’s more than meets the eye here.

On the surface, Dr. Hirschfeld seems like an awesome doctor – and he very well may be. Dr Hirschfeld’s bio from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) extols the “Professor and Chair” of its psychiatry deparment. He has history of working with various national organizations such as the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association,  National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). He’s written all kinds of articles and blah blah blah. He’s considered a leader in his research of bipolar disorder.

In fact, because Dr. Hirschfeld is so great, he’s a member of pharmaceutical boards and has acted as a consultant for pharmaceutical companies, according to ISI Highly Cited.com. Some of our favorite guys appear here: Pfizer, Wyeth, Abbott Labs., Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Forest Labs, Janssen, and – lookee here! – GSK.

The duration of Dr. Hirschfeld’s affiliations with these pharmaceutical companies are unspecified. All other “appointments/affiliations” have assigned years, i.e. 1972-1977, 2001-Present. His consulting affiliations follow his internship in 1968-1969. It looks a bit misleading to follow the consulting jobs after, oh say, 1969, and not provide dates of when he became a consultant for all of these pharma companies. Toward the end of the document that I found, his affiliations from 1986-Present are listed with various boards, associations, journals, and a slew of pharmaceutical companies.

Hello, hello, hello. He is a MEMBER of the Zyprexa U.S. Bipolar Academic Advisory Board, the Celexa/Excitalopram [sic] Executive Advisory Board, the Lamictal National Advisory Board, and the Zoloft Advisory Board.

Humor me here. His clinical trials include:

• 1994 Paroxetine for Dysthymia (SmithKline Beecham)
• 1995-97 Several (I found five) double-blind studies on sertraline and imipramine in patients qualifying for the DSM-III definition of major depressive disorder
• 1996-98 Gabapentin therapy for bipolar patients

And the list, including mirtazapine, fluoxetine, venlafaxine, lamotrigine, goes on. You can also find the “grants” pharma companies gave to fund these clinical trials.

From 1997-2000, Hirschfeld received a $100K grant from Abbott Labs to develop “a new checklist for bipolar symptoms.” (I’m not sure what the old one was.) In 2001, he received a $142K grant for the “Bipolar Prevalence and Impact MDQ Project.”

I don’t even need to look MDQ up. It’s Mood Disorder Questionnaire. The grant came from GSK, who “adapted” the questionnaire with Hirschfeld’s “permission.” That sounds simply gravy.

To understand more about bipolar disorder, you can listen to the stories of Greg, Stuart and Leslie – all your classic bipolar cases and how medication and/or therapy has helped them so much. You can also watch the bipolar
disorder animation that regurgitates all the things that we’ve become skeptical about.

In the meantime, remember the instructions included in Seroquel’s safety information that no one reads (excuse the crappy “Paint” job):

Decision Resources attempts to restore confidence in Big Pharma's atypicals

Whee for self-promotion!

“Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa Will Remain the Clinical Gold Standard for the Treatment of Schizophrenia Through 2015”

“Clinical Gold Standard,” huh?

I can’t bring anything new to the table on this. Maybe I’m wrong, but here I go:

“For almost three decades, Decision Resources has provided in-depth research on the trends, emerging developments, and market potential in various healthcare industry sectors.  Our client base is diverse – including large pharmaceutical companies, emerging biotechnology concerns, financial services, managed care organizations, and medical device manufacturers who turn to Decision Resources to help shape their strategy and master their chosen markets.

The privately-owned company offers a rich array of research publications advisory services, and consulting that make it second to none for quality, analytical depth and insight. With access to almost 10,000 thought leaders, specialists, HMO formulary directors, and general practitioners, Decision Resources’ highly-credentialed analysts are able to reconcile real-world practice with hard numbers from the industry’s most respected data sources.  The resulting analysis and insights drive business decisions and commercial success within the biopharmaceutical, managed care, medical device, and financial markets.”

Here’s my assessment, take it with a grain of salt: In an attempt to fight the decline in sales from the NYT-induced Zyprexa backlash, Eli Lilly has gone on the offensive and hired Decision Resources to reinvent its star medication.

Decision Resources (DR), a privately owned company (no hyphen if a modifier ends in “-ly”), has a client base that includes large pharmaceutical companies. Ta-da! Don’t get it?

Decision Resources is not a public company; hence, in addition to not receiving federal money, it doesn’t need to report its financial dealings to the SEC. Therefore, no publicly accessible financial records of DR’s clients. They haven’t said they are an “independent” organization. Perhaps this is implied. Whatever the case may be, DR gets paid by its client base to research their products and “help shape their strategy and master their chosen markets.”

This isn’t brain science; this is on their “About Us” section of their Web site. Therefore, if Eli Lilly turns to DR and pays them to – I like DR’s wording here – “shape their strategy and master their chosen markets,” then DR is essentially a PR loudspeaker letting everyone know that Zyprexa is the “clinical gold standard” for schizophrenia.

What a bunch of hooey.

Not too long ago, it seems that AstraZeneca (AZ) may have had DR engineer its new marketing strategy to give Seroquel a boost. Why not? Mental health media watchdogs are hatin’ on the atypical antipsychotics.

“According to a new report entitled Schizophrenia: Turning Physician Insight into Projected Patient Share, Zyprexa is superior in efficacy to all other current therapies, particularly on measures that are most important to prescribers, such as impact on global symptoms and responder rate.”

Holla at me if you’ve got your hands on that report mentioned above.

“In spite of scoring* less favorable than the other drugs in terms of safety and lower than risperidone in terms of delivery features, Zyprexa is the gold standard.”

OK – so it’s not safe and it doesn’t deliver as well as Risperdal – whatever that means – but Zyprexa is still “the gold standard”?

“This overall advantage for a drug with significant safety concerns highlights the importance of efficacy to prescribers.”

I want you to reread that: ” This overall advantage for a drug with significant safety concerns highlights the importance of efficacy to prescribers.” Let’s attempt to paraphrase this: The benefit of this potentially harmful drug shows the importance of how effective it is to those who receive the drug. Although Zyprexa has “significant safety concerns,” the drug works well enough for doctors to prescribe it to patients. Uh, no. Positives don’t outweigh the negatives. It was nice jargon for a second there, though. (If this is effed up enough for adults, why subject children to this crap?)

“The report also finds that the most commercially important emerging antipsychotics (Janssen’s Invega, Organon BioSciences’ asenapine, and Wyeth/Solvay/Lundbeck’s bifeprunox) score* lower than Zyprexa, indicating that Zyprexa will remain unsurpassed during Decision Resources’ forecast period.”

I know I’m doing a play-by-play but this is important. I need to find out how DR decided that Zyprexa would be the “gold standard” until 2015. (What’s the significance of this year? Does EL’s patent on Zyprexa expire then? Nope, Eli Lilly’s patent on Zyprexa expires in 2011. Expect a similar molecularly structured olanzapine before then. Biolexapine?) So basically, in this report, DR’s conclusion is Zyprexa beats every other atypical antipsychotic for schizophrenia by far. Notice that AZ’s Seroquel (the soon-to-be “gold standard” of bipolar meds),  an atypical also used for schizophrenia, is not listed. Not coincidence.

The little asterisk (*) next to the word “score” prompts me to wonder: Just how did they come up with these scores? Well, the asterisk tells me that I need to contact DR for the methodology behind the product scores. I just might. Then send it off to CL Psych or Furious Seasons to decipher the crap out of it.

Another thing to note on this PR:

“”Invega is a metabolite of risperidone and is likely to have efficacy similar to that of risperidone, which scored* slightly lower than Zyprexa overall,” said Nitasha Manchanda, Ph.D., analyst at Decision Resources. “Asenapine also lacks the differentiation to replace Zyprexa as the gold standard because it does not make as significant an impact on global symptoms, and bifeprunox is significantly inferior to Zyprexa in all primary efficacy measures and is not capable of surpassing Zyprexa.””

Dr. Manchanda, analyst for DR, pulled bifeprunox – not yet on the drug market – into the Zyprexa comparison and somehow was able to call it “significantly inferior to Zyprexa” with an incapability to “surpass” it. How many people have used bifeprunox, Ms. Manchanda? OK, now tell me how many people have used Zyprexa? And you’re telling me that a drug that hasn’t yet hit the market is “significantly inferior” to a drug that has been on the market for the past couple of years and has 1,200 lawsuits still pending in addition to the millions that have already been paid?

As for AZ, DR has determined that Seroquel will become the “gold standard” for bipolar medication by 2010, knocking Lamictal out of its current “gold standard” status. Like Furious Seasons, I had NO idea Lamictal was held up so highly for bipolar meds. Considering that lithium has always been the king of bipolar meds and treats both acute mania and depression better than Lamictal, I’m surprised to read this.

“According to the new DecisionBase report entitled Bipolar Depression: Turning Physician Insight into Projected Market Share, Seroquel’s advantages over Lamictal include the more profound effect on depressive symptoms seen in short-term trials.”

My doctor precribed Lamictal to me for management of depressive symptoms in bipolar disorder. He conversely prescribed Seroquel for mania (and to help me get sleep).  Getting back to the short-term trials, Lamictal was tested for 18 months for long-term management of bipolar disorder. Seroquel, however, was tested for 8 weeks. Effective for the short-term? Perhaps. But most patients on atypicals take them long-term. And that’s precisely where Seroquel fails.

“The drug’s efficacy on this measure differentiates it from other therapies, according to thought-leading psychiatrists, and the importance assigned to this measure by prescribing psychiatrists drives Seroquel’s product score above Lamictal’s.*”

According to thought-leading psychiatrists who probably function as consultants and analysts for “large pharmaceutical companies.” Seroquel may have the potential to sell more than Lamictal by 2010 – if this is what DR’s gauging. However, it seems like DR is trying to push Seroquel, not just as a better market share, but as a better product. In this “report,” DR also fails to compare Seroquel’s efficacy to Zyprexa’s. What a convenient absence for a product used for psychosis in bipolar disorder.

(ignore any spelling errors in this post. it’s late and i bumped my forehead against the edge of a car door in the rain. ouch.)