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Chances BuSpar Will Work and How BuSpar Compares with Other Medications.
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Keep in mind who sponsors the study, as it will tends to make the results more
favorable for the med in question (on average 3.6 times more likely,
according to a Yale study).
Chances of BuSpar's (buspirone hydrochloride's) working for generalized anxiety disorder -
Better than Placebo,
as long as you've never used a benzodiazepene before. Does not work as well as
benzodiazepenes, and patients
were more likely to quit. "[W]e were unable to conclude if azapirones were
superior to antidepressants, kava kava or psychotherapy." With nearly six
thousand patients in the studies, you'd think they'd figure it out. Yet if one is anxious and mildly depressed,
BuSpar is a good choice. Go figure. As for social phobia, BuSpar worked OK
in this small, open-label study. But as one can see below,
Xanax is better for phobias. However,
A small, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of patients with social phobia
shows no significant difference in response, with no few people in either group
feeling any better.
Chances of BuSpar's (buspirone hydrochloride's) working as an
antidepressant augmentation after SSRI failure: Pretty good.
This study of unknown size and without any placebo control shows
BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride)
to be as effective as an
add-on to
Celexa as Wellbutrin SR
added to Celexa. The combination of BuSpar and Celexa had similar rates of efficacy to
Effexor XR, Wellbutrin SR, or
Zoloft as monotherapy.
This small study of people who tried everything, including lithium
and thyroid meds, electro-convulsive therapy, and a variety of antidepressants
to no avail. But adding BuSpar to an SSRI worked
for 6 out of the 14 people in the study. Unfortunately we have a couple of studies where the news isn't so good.
A really small, open-label (everyone knew who was taking what) study showed
that adding BuSpar to SSRIs helped, but not that much. And then there's
the one, good size, double-blind, placebo-controlled study where almost
everyone felt better. Oops. Can you say, "placebo effect." I
knew you could. |
BuSpar vs. Xanax (alprazolam) vs. placebo for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Good sized, double-blind study. Hard to tell who won here. Xanax worked faster and didn't get any better after one week, while BuSpar continued to work better over the course of the six weeks. More people dropped out of the BuSpar group because nothing happened other than side effects after the first week or two. You'd have to pick which side effects sucked more, Xanax's sedation or BuSpar's tummy troubles. Otherwise it was a draw.
BuSpar vs. Xanax (alpraxolam) vs. placebo for panic disorder. With higher dosages than the above study the results were: Xanax wins hands down. BuSpar may suck less in this case, but after eight weeks BuSpar couldn't catch up to Xanax's one-week efficacy for panic, anxiety and letting people leave their houses. No matter how drugged out and dependent upon Xanax they happened to be.
BuSpar vs. imipramine vs. placebo for panic disorder. BuSpar works better than placebo for panic, but imipramine still worked better than BuSpar. This study done way back in 1989 foreshadows the whole thing about BuSpar not doing squat for some people. Or in research speak, "Some buspirone patients did very well compared to others, suggesting a possible bimodal distribution of response."
BuSpar to make the lives of parents easier if their kids have learning disabilities and/or are autistic. Well, if you're going to experiment on your children without their consent, you may as well use a medication that doesn't suck that much. After all, only one kid in 22 is subject to "involuntary movements." Small risk to deal with anxiety and irritability. It's not as if "normal" children are ever like that.
Cage Match! Pindolol with desipramine or trimipramine vs. pindolol and Luvox (fluvoxamine) vs. BuSpar and pindolol The idea is seeing how well 5-HT1A agonists work with antidepressants or on their own. The results - combined with the beta-blocker pindolol is the best and fastest combination. Pindolol and Luvox (fluvoxamine) works well, just not as quickly. Pindolol with a TCA like desipramine or trimipramine is pretty useless.
BuSpar vs. Serzone (nefazodone) vs. placebo for the treatment of premenstrual dysphoria (PMD). OK, it's not like you're going to get a prescription for nefazodone these days. In any event BuSpar worked a little better and sucked less. At least in the short term. In the long term Serzone tended to eat the livers of enough people to yank it from the market.
BuSpar vs amitriptyline in the treatment of chronic tension-type headache. In this small study BuSpar worked OK, but amitriptyline worked better and somehow sucked less.
Click on these links to learn more about BuSpar:
BuSpar's Approved and Off-label Uses BuSpar's Pros and Cons BuSpar's Side Effects How to Take and Stop Taking BuSpar BuSpar's Effectiveness and Comparisons with Other Meds How BuSpar Works Buying BuSpar Global BuSpar PI Sheets and Other Links for BuSpar Comments
Check for Drug-Drug Interactions

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Crazy Meds Home Crazy Meds Talk About Antidepressants About SSRIs About Anticonvulsants / Mood Stabilizers About Atypical Antipsychotics About Benzodiazepines About Stimulants Finding a Doctor Sites with More Information Support Group Sites About Crazy Meds Crazy Meds: The Blog
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Take care of yourself, and keep taking your crazy meds!
Jerod
If you still have unanswered questions about this or other medications,
including which one is, or combination of meds are the best for you, your best
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If you want to discuss your issues, I suggest checking out one of
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Otherwise, if you're letting me know about how much you like or hate the site,
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a note to jerod23 at gmail dot com Honestly, I usually don't have a
lot of time to answer e-mail these days. The snide autoresponse
message that may or may not hit your mailbox is going to tell you the same
thing.
Another problem is that you may not get a response even if I wanted to send you
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I've been blacklisted because of the actions of others. Or the software
just doesn't like the domain name because of the "crazy" and/or "meds." Or
your question about a particular medication will set off spam flags. So
the e-mail just wouldn't go through regardless. Sorry.
Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine? Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.
Dead tree reference:
Physicians' Desk Reference Edition 60 Lori Murray Senior Editor, Michael DeLuca, PharmD Drug
Information Specialist, et al. © 2006. Published by Thomson PDR. End of books used for this article. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Created Wednesday, June 13 2007
Last updated Monday, May 24, 2010
Content Copyright © 2007 Jessica Allan. Format Copyright 2007 Jerod Poore. All rights reserved.
Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets, those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about. And any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That's usually me, so just ask first. That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that's OK to just do. Go for it! Please. As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I'm cool with it.
All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won't necessarily happen to you. Nobody on this site is a doctor, therapist, or a pharmacist. We don't portray them either here or on TV. Only doctors can diagnose and treat an illness. Some doctors tend to get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don't be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you'll get every side effect from every medication. Self-prescribing is just as dangerous. All information on this site has been obtained through personal experience, the experiences of my friends, the experiences of people reported on online support groups, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site. Know your sources! As such the information presented here is not a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies listed after them in the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may or may not have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Always read the PI sheet that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away. If you didn't get a PI sheet, demand one. Loudly. Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to. We like them, or they're paid advertisements, or they're something you should read to make an informed decision about a particular med. Sometimes they're more than one of those things. But what's on those sites is their business, not ours. Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. And from time to time I do look at search terms used to find it in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited.
"Everything is true, nothing is permitted." - Jerod Poore
