RESUMEN
The incidence of depression is 0.9% in preschoolers, 1.9% in school age children, and 4.7% in adolescents. Current antidepressant treatment of mood disorders in children and adolescents is still in the early phases of being validated with double-blind efficacy studies. In this study the efficacy of nortriptyline has been compared with fluoxetine in the treatment of major depression in children and adolescents. This was a double.blind clinical trial for 8 weeks, undertaken in the Isfahan Child and Adolescent Guidance outpatient Clinic, Isfahan, Iran. Subjects were 40 outpatients children and adolescents [20 boys and 20 girls] aged 7-16 years of old who met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Forth Edition, for Major Depression. To determine the scores of two groups [Baseline and after treatment], we used Children Depression Inventory [CDI]. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive nortriptyline 2mg/kg/day for 8 weeks [group A] or fluoxetine 1mg/kg/day for 8 weeks, [group B]. Paired t-test was used to compare the mean of CDI score of each group before and after treatment. To compare the reduction in the Children Depression Inventory score, an unpaired t-test was used. The mean depression score was 28.9 [SD +/- 8.46] before intervention in fluoxetine group while that was 28.4 [SD +/- 8.76] in nortriptyline group. Independent t-test showed a significant difference between after treatment mean depression scores in both groups [t=2.97, df=38, P=0.004]. The changes at the endpoint compared with baseline were -10.95 +/- 2.61 and 2.6 +/- 0.8 for fluoxetine and nortriptyline, respectively. t- Paired test showed a significant decrease in mean depression score in fluoxetine group [P