We’re really scratching our heads with this one.
As we noted yesterday, St. John’s wort is not an effective treatment for attention deficit disorder (ADHD). Okay. That’s fine. But when we looked through the literature to try and figure out why anyone would think St. John’s wort would be effective for ADHD, we came up empty-handed.
It’s fairly unusual to see researchers go to the trouble of a trial of this size and nature to prove a negative. But then when we saw one of the authors of the study was none other than the infamous Joseph Biederman of the Harvard scandal, the pieces fell together. To us, it would be like suggesting St. John’s wort may be an effective treatment for schizophrenia, since they both purportedly work on neurotransmitters in the brain (not far from the reasoning used by the researchers in the present study).
Biederman, as you may know, takes drug money from pharmaceutical companies. Nothing wrong with that, except that when you’re a researcher, you’d better make sure you make those ties well-known in advance. Oops! Biederman failed to report a measly $1.6 million of drug-tied money. Guess who gave him a lot of that money?
Yes, you’re right — the makers of certain ADHD medications.
Now, far be it for us to connect the dots here, but it seems strangely coincidental that one of the leading researchers of this study finds that a potentially competitive treatment is no more effective than placebo. Far be it from us to paint all researchers with the same tainted brush, but Biederman is now tainted by his failure to disclose this kind of huge sum of money to his own university. You know, that prestigious one… Harvard.
Typically null results like this make no headlines and no mainstream media picks it up. But this story made lots of headlines and lots of mainstream media picked it up. We find that unusual and can’t help but wonder at why this study was done at all.
Read the full article: St. John’s Wort Not Effective for ADHD
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Links to This Article
St. John’s Wort and ADHD « The Country Shrink (6/12/2008)
From Psych Central's World of Psychology:
Evaluating Drug-Free Alternatives for A.D.H.D. - World of Psychology (6/17/2008)
3 Comments to
“St. John’s Wort for ADHD?”
Thanks for the followup. And the bull’s eye. Eli Lilly is among the pharmaceutical companies that underwrite the research and clinical trials in which Dr. Biederman is the principal investigator. Including Eli Lilly’s Strattera for ADD/HD (the one that was identified as the messiah of meds and now has the black box warning).
I puttered around with Google for a bit and found that these results - non-efficacy of St. John’s wort in ADHD - were reported in one of the British journals in 2002.
It gets worse and worse.
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/06/biederman-defender-has-ties-to-biederman/
> > > [QUOTE[ ... Susan Resko, director of the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, told the Times: “I consider Dr. Biederman a true visionary in recognizing this illness in children, and he’s not only saved many lives but restored hope to thousands of families across the country.”
> > >[CONTINUED] “Two points worth noting - a major donor to the foundation is Johnson & Johnson, which sells Risperdal, a drug that was approved only last August to treat children 10 years and older with bipolar disorder. Also, Biederman is the first person listed on the foundation’s advisory council.” [END]
And worse and worse.
http://www.psychiatrist.com/pcc/visuals/disc.htm
Physicians Post Graduate Press, Inc. (collection of published, peer-reviewed journal articles that posts disclosures of funding)
> > > [QUOTE] Dr. Biederman has received research support from:
Shire Richwood
Eli Lilly
Wyeth
Pfizer
Cephalon
Novartis
Janssen
Noven Pharmaceutical
Stanley Foundation National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, and
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA);
[CONTINUED] [He] is a member of the speakers bureaus for GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, Wyeth, Shire Richwood, ALZA, and Cephalon; and is a member of the advisory boards for Eli Lilly, Celltech, Shire Richwood, Novartis, Noven Pharmaceutical, ALZA, McNeil, and Cephalon. [END]
I can’t describe how let down I feel. ADHD, depression and bipolar are the foundations of who I am. I had always respected Dr. Biederman and viewed him as an advocate and source of unbiased information. I never even knew that he led the Strattera research.
Trust is a fragile thing for me, and he broke it.
To make sure that his drug trumped St. John’s wort, they played with the concepts of science a little. First: they tested an ‘active’ ingredient that they acknowledge was probably inactivated due to oxidation (it got stale): “Hyperforin…quickly…becomes inactive…which is likely what happened…in this trial;” Second: some (but not all) followers of St. John say that it must be harvested at a specific time of its blooming season, but the article makes no mention of this. There are other indicators of poor design, most notably the greater decrease in adhd scores on all measures for the placebo group versus SJW - that’s odd.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 11 Jun 2008
