Objective. to clarify the clinical action of venlafaxine during courses of treatment in patients with different depressive states of endogenous origin. Materials and methods. An open, naturalistic study was performed using 32 patients with different nosological forms of endogenous depression (manic depressive psychosis, cyclothymia, schizophrenia). Courses of venlafaxine (Velaxin) at daily doses of 37.5–300 mg lasted 56 days. Clinical and psychometric evaluations of results were performed. Results. Venlafaxine was found to be a highly active antidepressant, such that by the end of treatment the reduction in total points scores on the Hamilton depression scale (HAM-D) of more than 50% were achieved in 84.4% of patients; among these, reductions in total HAM-D scores by more than 80% were obtained in 78.1% of cases. Conclusions. The features of the clinical actions of venlafaxine define it as a multiprofile antidepressant with clearly balanced actions; within the spectrum of its antidepressant actions, its intrinsic thymoleptic effect is more marked than its anxiolytic and stimulating effects, which provides high efficacy in different types of endogenous depression – anxious, apathetic-adynamic, and particularly melancholic.
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Translated from Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S. S. Korsakova, Vol. 115, No. 1, Iss. 2, Depression, pp. 43–51, January, 2015.
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Panteleeva, G.P., Oleichik, I.V., Abramova, L.I. et al. Treatment of Endogenous Depression with Venlafaxine: Clinical Action, Tolerance, and Personalized Indications for Prescription. Neurosci Behav Physi 46, 665–672 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-016-0294-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-016-0294-x