Current therapeutic strategies for anxious depressives

Anxious depressives refers to a group of patients with a primary depressive disorder, who also have significant symptoms of anxiety. Despite the fact that this group of patients is widely recognized and understood to have a poorer prognosis, this group has been poorly studied to date. In this review, we briefly examine the pathophysiology and neurophysiology of this condition. We then reviewed in detail the relevant clinical studies which have been carried out in this condition and published over the last 5 years. Taken together, the results of published studies begin to suggest that patients with anxious depression may respond better to antidepressants that are dual action drugs (such as serotonin and noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitors), rather than single action drugs (such as specific serotonin re-uptake inhibitors). However, further controlled studies are warranted to test this hypothesis.