Pooling two controlled comparisons of milnacipran (F2207) and amitriptyline in endogenous inpatients. A new approach in dose ranging studies.

Milnacipran is a new potential antidepressant selected for its equipotent inhibition of noradrenaline and serotonin uptake and its lack of effect at any postsynaptic receptor. We recently compared milnacipran 100 and 50 mg/d and amitriptyline 150 mg/d in three parallel randomized groups of major depressive inpatients and found a statistically significant superiority of milnacipran 100 mg/d and amitriptyline over milnacipran 50 mg/d after 4 weeks of treatment. Later on we found similar improvement with milnacipran 200 mg and amitriptyline 150 mg but better tolerance with milnacipran. In order to compare the therapeutic activity of the three doses of milnacipran (50 mg/d, 100 mg/d, and 200 mg/d) we used the responses to amitriptyline as a reference against which to compare the 3 doses of the new drug using analysis of variance on the adjusted data. This approach reveals milnacipran 200 mg is more effective than milnacipran 50 and 100 mg and is the only dose which shows efficacy at least equivalent to that of amitriptyline 150 mg. The dose/efficacy relationship was linear.