抗抑郁药遭质疑(1)【沪江慢速VOA080318】

作者：VOA | 沪江听说VOA美国之音时间：3年前 | 阅读：2701次 | [划词　　　]

Report Points to Limits of Some Antidepressants (1/2)

A study has raised new questions about the effectiveness of several popular drugs for depression. These antidepressants are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

S.S.R.I.s are designed to help keep serotonin, a brain chemical, at a continuous level. The new study suggests that they provide little help to the large majority of the millions who take them.
Scientists from Britain, Canada and the United States did the study. It was a meta-analysis, a study of studies.

The team used an American law, the Freedom of Information Act, to get unpublished reports on thirty-five clinical trials of four drugs. Drug companies gave these and published studies to the Food and Drug Administration for approval of the medicines.In the clinical trials, people with depression were treated with either an antidepressant or a placebo, a pill that contains no medicine. They did not know which they got.

The new report says those who received medicine did improve. But comparable numbers of those who received placebos also improved. The report says the drugs had meaningful results only in the most severely depressed patients.

参考译文：

有一项研究对于几种常用的抗抑郁药物的有效性提出了新的质疑。这些抗抑郁的药物都是选择性5-羟色胺再摄取抑制剂。

选择性5-羟色胺再摄取抑制剂是用来帮助大脑中的一种化学成分——5-羟色胺保持持续水平的。新的研究表明它们对于成千上万的服用者来说疗效甚微。

这个研究是由来自英国、加拿大和美国的科学家们进行的。这次研究是荟萃分析，就是对已有的研究结果进行研究。

研究队伍用美国的《自由信息法》得到了四种药物的三十五份未出版的临床试验报告。药物公司会把这些报告和已经出版了的研究送到食品与药品管理局去获得生产药物的批准。在这些临床试验中，抑郁症患者部分会服用抗抑郁的药物，部分会服用不含药物的安慰剂，但是患者本人并不知道他们服用的是哪一种。

新的报告表明那些服用药物的患者确实有所好转，但是那些服用安慰剂的患者同样也有所好转。报告说那些药物只有对特别严重的抑郁症患者才有显著的疗效。