TUESDAY, April 17 (HealthScout) -- People taking the herb St. John's wort for serious depression might just as well take a sugar pill, claims a new study.
　　Neither works, the researchers say.

The finding contradicts earlier studies suggesting that the popular herbal remedy could lift the dark moods associated with depression. But those studies were smaller and less rigorous than the latest project, which is reported in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Richard Shelton of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and colleagues at 10 other U.S. medical centers compared the herbal extract with dummy pills in 200 adults with major depression. Half the participants took an initial dose of 900 milligrams of St. John's wort, also known as Hypericum perforatum, bumped up to 1,200 milligrams in people who didn't respond. The rest received placebos.

Some people in each group improved over time, the researchers say. But after eight weeks, the symptoms of depression were no different, on average, in those who took the herbal remedy than in those who'd gotten no treatment, the study says.

Fourteen people who took St. John's wort had remissions of their depression compared with five who took placebos, but both rates were considered very low, the researchers say. Although St. John's wort appears to be safe, 41 percent of study participants who took it reported headaches, compared with 25 percent of the people taking dummy pills, the researchers say.

"Basically this was a negative study in which we were unable to show efficacy or better efficacy than placebo," says study co-author Dr. Uriel Halbreich, a psychiatrist at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Initial results of the research were presented last summer to the American Psychiatric Association.

Based on the findings, Halbreich says the researchers cannot recommend St. John's wort to treat "people who have major depressive disorder and more than mild severity of symptoms."

However, the study "doesn't say St. John's wort isn't effective for very mild depression, and it doesn't show that maybe other dosages and other forms [of the supplement] might [work better]," Halbreich says.

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which makes a St. John's wort product and the prescription antidepressant Zoloft, funded the study.

Duke University psychiatrists currently are running a government-sponsored study comparing St. John's wort with dummy pills and with Zoloft in more than 330 people with major depression. Dr. Kishore Gadde, a researcher involved with that study, says results should be available this year.
　　

　　By Adam Marcus
　　From HealthScout