Trial Outcomes & Findings for Randomised Placebo-controlled Duloxetine-referenced Study of Efficacy and Safety of 5 mg of Vortioxetine (Lu AA21004) in Acute Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder in Elderly Patients (NCT NCT00811252)

Patients were mainly recruited via psychiatric, psycho-geriatric, and geriatric inpatient or outpatient settings.

The study consisted of a Screening Period; an 8-week Core Treatment Period; a 1-week double-blind down-taper period (Week 9); and a 4-week Safety Follow-up Period after completion/withdrawal (Weeks 8 to 12).

Randomised Placebo-controlled Duloxetine-referenced Study of Efficacy and Safety of 5 mg of Vortioxetine (Lu AA21004) in Acute Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder in Elderly Patients

The Hamilton Depression Scale - 24 Items (HAM-D-24) measures depression severity. Items are rated on a scale from 0 (symptoms not present) to a maximum of 2 to 4 (symptom extremely severe) for a total score range of 0 to 76. The higher the score, the more severe.

The Montgomery Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) is a depression rating scale consisting of 10 items, each rated 0 (no symptom) to 6 (severe symptom). The 10 items represent the core symptoms of depressive illness. The rating should be based on a clinical interview with the patient, moving from broadly phrased questions about symptoms to more detailed ones, which allow a precise rating of severity, covering the last 7 days. Total score from 0 to 60. The higher the score, the more severe.

The Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A) consists of 14 items that assess anxious mood, tension, fear, insomnia, intellectual (cognitive) symptoms, depressed mood, behaviour at interview, somatic (sensory), cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, autonomic, and somatic (muscular) symptoms. Each symptom is rated from 0 (absent) to 4 (maximum severity). Total score from 0 to 56. The higher the score, the more severe.

The Clinical Global Impression - Severity of Illness (CGI-S) is a 7-point scale rated from 1 (normal, not at all ill) to 7 (among the most extremely ill patients). The investigator should use his/her total clinical experience with this patient population to judge how mentally ill the patient is at the time of rating.

The Clinical Global Impression - Global Improvement (CGI-I) is a 7-point scale rated from 1 (very much improved) to 7 (very much worse). The investigator rated the patient's overall improvement relative to baseline, whether or not, in the opinion of the investigator, this was entirely due to the drug treatment.

The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) is a patient self-rating scale designed for the screening of depression in the elderly. It has also been validated as a measure of depression severity. The original version consists of 30 questions with a yes/no answer. In this study, the short 15-item version was used. The total score ranges from 0 to 15, with 15 representing maximum severity.

The Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) was developed by researchers at Columbia University as a tool to systematically assess suicidal ideation and behaviour in patients during participation in a clinical study. The C-SSRS is composed of questions that address suicidal behaviour and questions that address suicidal ideation, with sub-questions that assess severity. The tool was administered via an interview with the patient.