Antidepressant use and resource utilization in the general practitioner setting in The Netherlands.

Objective: To assess antidepressant use and resource utilization in the general practitioner (GP) setting in the Netherlands following initiation of antidepressant therapy.

Design: Longitudinal study in a retrospective database.

Participants: Sample of 869 patients from a new database in the Netherlands who initiated therapy on a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) or a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA).

Value of epidemiologic studies in determining the true incidence of adverse events. The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug story.

Background: Evidence supporting differential toxic effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) often is derived from spontaneous reports of adverse events to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These reports represent observations from an undefined, exposed population that are not collected in a standardized manner and therefore are subject to reporting biases. Epidemiologic studies, in which the numbers of patients experiencing an adverse event and exposed to the drug are known, provide more reliable measures of risk and can place spontaneous reports in perspective.

Prescribing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, anxiolytics, and sedative-hypnotics by general practitioners in The Netherlands: a multivariate analysis.

A study of the prescribing of anxiolytics and sedative-hypnotics and the occurrence of anxiety or sleep disorders before and after the initiation of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) therapy may provide insight into differences in individual SSRIs. The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether and in what way the likelihood of being prescribed an anxiolytic or sedative-hypnotic or receiving a diagnosis of an anxiety or sleep disorder differed in patients prescribed either fluoxetine or paroxetine by a general practitioner (GP) in the Netherlands, where these two agents are the most commonly prescribed SSRIs. Episodes of SSRI treatment were constructed from a recently available GP database in the Netherlands.