A Controlled Study

In this double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial of maprotiline (Ludiomil) against imipramine involving twenty-five newly admitted hospital ized patients, a strong tendency in favour of maprotiline over imipramine emerged. Improvement occurred faster and also at treatment eitd-polnt the trend in favotir of maprotiline was still to be seen. The slight sttperiority in clinical efficacy of maprotiline over imipramine was present in both physician and patient measures. Incidences of side-effects were slightly lower for maprotiline than for imipramine. I n t r o d u c t i o n Kuhn, Weiner, Guz and Angst et al reported at an international symposium in 1972 significant antidepressant effects for mapro tiline. The first two authors compared maprotiline with amitriptyline and the last two authors compared maprotiline with imipramine. The main findings in these studies indicate depressive symptomatology to be improved regardless of the agent used. There seemed to exist, however, a trend in the latter two mentioned studies for mapro tiline to be faster acting than imipramine and to produce slightly fewer side-eflfects. In addition, Angst ct al (1972) reported that imipramine seemed to be slightly superior to maprotiline in improving psychomotor re tardation and lack of drive. In 1971, Balesterieri et al found similarly favourable results for maprotiline. More recently, Amin et al (1973) compared mapro tiline with amitriptyline and found an non-significant trend in favour of maprotiline. The present in-patient study comparing maprotiline with imipramine was designed in an attempt to replicate these earlier findings