Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESAn Open-Label Trial of Escitalopram in Pervasive Developmental Disorders
Section snippets
Subjects
A sample of 28 subjects (25 males and 3 females) (Table 1) between the ages of 6 and 17 years of age (mean 125.1 ± 33.5 months) who fulfilled criteria for a PDD (20 subjects with an autistic disorder, 5 subjects with Asperger's disorder, 3 subjects with PDD, not otherwise specified) by all three of the following: Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) (Lord et al., 1994), Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) (Lord et al., 2000), and DSM-IV criteria used by a psychiatrist
RESULTS
Thirty-three subjects were assessed for participation in the study. Three subjects were excluded from the study when it was determined that the subjects were below the necessary inclusion score on the ABC-CV Irritability Subscale. Two subjects were excluded by ADI/ADOS testing (not thought to have a PDD after testing). Twenty-three of 28 subjects were able to finish the 10 weeks of the study. The other five subjects did not finish the study for various reasons. Two had a good response to
DISCUSSION
This prospective, open-label study of escitalopram suggested that this medication is useful for the treatment of some symptoms of PDDs. The responder rate in this study (61%) is similar to that achieved in previous open-label studies of SSRIs in PDDs such as those of Brodkin et al. (1997) (55%), Cook et al. (1992) (65%), DeLong et al. (1998) (59%), and Hellings et al. (1996) (57%) and in placebo-controlled studies such as McDougle et al. (1996) (57%).
Of the subjects who finished the study (23),
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This study was funded by National Institute of Health grants K01 MH64539 (T.O.) and U19 HD35482 (E.H.C.). The authors also acknowledge the generous support of the Jean Young and Walden W. Shaw Foundation and the University of Chicago General Clinical Research Center (NIH grant M01 RR00055).
Correspondence to Dr. Thomas Owley, Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago, MC 3077, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637; e-mail: [email protected].
Disclosure: Dr. Leventhal receives reseach support from Abbott, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Shire, Pfizer, and Forrest Laboratories; he is on the speaker's bureaus of Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Bristol-Meyers Squibb/Otsuka; and he has consulting relationships with Abbott, Eli Lilly, Janssen, McNeil, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline. The other authors have no financial relationships to disclose.