SINGLE-SUBJECT EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE INDIVIDUALLY DIFFERENTIAL-EFFECTS OF ANXIOLYTICS IN GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER

In the pharmacotherapy of chronic generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) r ationally grounded guidelines on the treatment to choose in individual cases are not evident in the literature. The present study was design ed to address this question in 30 patients with chronic GAD. Within a period of 31 weeks, amitriptyline 30 mg/day, flupentixole 1.5 mg/day, clotiazepam 15 mg/day and placebo were administered 4 times for 1 week , double-blind and at random to each patient. U tests showed that in 1 9 patients one agent was superior to the other substances (p < 0.05). There was no significant difference between the drugs in II patients, However, a meta-analysis across all single-subject experiments showed that in individual patients suffering from chronic GAD differential ef fects of anxiolytic agents can be found by means of single-subject exp eriments Cp < 0.001). The findings lend further support to the hypothe sis that, in an approach to optimize pharmacological treatment of pati ents suffering from chronic GAD, single-subject experiments may be use ful.