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PEM report number 5. Fluoxetine
Author(s) -
Inman William,
Kubota Kiyoshi,
Pearce Gillian,
Wilton Lynda
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.023
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1099-1557
pISSN - 1053-8569
DOI - 10.1002/pds.2630020408
Subject(s) - fluoxetine , medicine , medical prescription , paroxetine , fluvoxamine , serotonin reuptake inhibitor , psychiatry , population , reuptake inhibitor , incidence (geometry) , antidepressant , pediatrics , serotonin , pharmacology , anxiety , physics , receptor , environmental health , optics
The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine was first marketed in the United Kingdom in January 1989. It has been studied by Prescription‐Event Monitoring (PEM) in 12,692 patients who had received prescriptions from general practitioners in England between March 1989 and March 1990. There were more than twice as many females in the series as males and the average ages were 49.4 and 50.1 years respectively. The majority of patients were taking 20 mg daily (89%), but doses ranged up to 120 mg daily. Where an opinion had been given, fluoxetine was said to have been effective in 57% of patients. The events following treatment were compared with those reported after prescription of two other SSRIs, paroxetine and fluvoxamine, and with the ‘pooled’ results in 34 studies, in order to detect possible differences within the group of SSRIs and to obtain some impression of the background rates in a population of over 350,000 monitored by PEM. Coincidental with the PEM study there was much publicity, initiated in the United States by a report of suicidal and aggressive behaviour. A subsidiary study of doctors' and patients' attitudes before and after a heavily biased television programme was initiated about one‐fifth of the patients in the PEM study. There was no evidence to suggest that the frequency of aggressive or suicidal behaviour following the use of fluoxetine was increased. The overall incidence of side‐effects was low and no deaths were attributed to fluoxetine.