Cost comparison of commonly used antidepressant drugs with drug price control order in India

Background: Price of a drug is an important factor for compliance to the treatment. So, to overcome the high prices of drugs, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) under government of India has issued Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) list containing commonly used drugs. Pharmaceutical companies can be punished if they keep their prices higher than the ceiling price mentioned in the DPCO. To find out the price variations of commonly used antidepressant drugs included in DPCO list of 29th April 2019.Methods: A list of all oral antidepressant drugs included in DPCO of 29th April 2019 and available in Indian market was procured from medguide India. Analysis of number of total brands following as well as not following DPCO ceiling price was done.Results: Author found 17 formulations of four antidepressant drugs included in DPCO. Total 556 brands found out of which 84.6% were following the DPCO and 15.4% of brands prices were higher than the ceiling price of DPCO.Conclusions: Though large number of companies are following the DPCO but still strict regulation is needed to further increase the compliance of guidelines.

The use of cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors in depression: a narrative review of the state of evidence

Multiple lines of evidence suggest that inflammation contribute to the pathophysiology of depression. Various studies have found that patients with major depression have higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines like interleukin-1, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha and C-reactive protein. As a consequence of above findings this narrative literature review was done to look for the role of cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 inhibitors in the patients of depression. A web based search was done using the keywords like antidepressants, anti-inflammatory treatment, celecoxib, depression, neuro inflammation in well recognized databases like PubMed, Google scholar from the year 2006 to 2019 to come out with data that matches our inclusion criteria that have been pooled and critically analyzed. Although the exact mechanism remains to become elucidated the results suggest that COX-2 have beneficial role in treatment of depression and it may be used as an adjunct to the anti-depressant treatment as it may hasten the response to current treatment without any serious side effects.