Antidepressant Use may not Improve Symptoms from Stomach Disorder

For those suffering from idiopathic gastroparesis--a rare and challenging stomach disease that causes the organ's muscles or the nerves controlling them to stop working, resulting in painful and inadequate emptying of food into the intestine--has few effective treatments at this time to control the health issue, and for 1 in 10 patients suffering from the problem, they will be disabled.

According to a recent study, one possible approach to treating the problem can involve antidepressants. For instance, lead study author Henry P. Parkman, M.D., of Temple University, Philadelphia, theorizes that some of the symptoms from the health issues such as nausea and pain, arise from changes in certain stomach nerves. Therefore, tricyclic antidepressants are a category of drug often used to treat refractory symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

To test the treatments, researchers randomized 130 patients with idiopathic gastroparesis to notriptyline or a placebo in order to determine which group would result in an improvement of symptoms. Throughout the study, the drug dose was increased at 3-week intervals.

Findings showed that overall, the antidepressant group's symptoms did not differ greatly from the placebo groups'. There was also no treatment group differences in measures of fullness, nausea or early satiety or bloating.

"Our results raise general doubts about the utility of tricyclic antidepressants in low doses as a strategy for the treatment of idiopathic gastroparesis," the authors conclude, via a press release.

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More information regarding the study can be found via JAMA.