Bmc Med
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Optimising first- and second-line treatment strategies for untreated major depressive disorder - the SUN☺D study: a pragmatic, multi-centre, assessor-blinded randomised controlled trial.
For patients starting treatment for depression, current guidelines recommend titrating the antidepressant dosage to the maximum of the licenced range if tolerated. When patients do not achieve remission within several weeks, recommendations include adding or switching to another antidepressant. However, the relative merits of these guideline strategies remain unestablished. ⋯ In patients with new onset depression, we found no advantage of titrating sertraline to 100 mg vs 50 mg. Patients unremitted by week 3 gained a small benefit in reduction of depressive symptoms at week 9 by switching sertraline to mirtazapine or by adding mirtazapine.