Trial reportNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2022
Acute neurofunctional effects of escitalopram during emotional processing in pediatric anxiety: a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.
Trial report in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT02818751 (Neurofunctional Predictors of Escitalopram Treatment Response in Adolescents With Anxiety), which is not on this map. Cited by 12 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neurofunctional Predictors of Escitalopram Treatment Response in Adolescents With Anxiety
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Altered amygdala resting-state functional connectivity in anxiety disorders: a coordinate-based meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- The medial prefrontal cortex as a proposed regulatory structure in the relationship between anxiety and perceived social support: a review.BMC psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Deprescribing Antidepressants in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Discontinuation Approaches, Cross-Titration, and Withdrawal Symptoms.Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology · 2025Pooled it
- Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Pediatric Patients with Anxiety Disorders and Their Relationship to Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Treatment or Placebo.Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Trial
- The safety and efficacy of escitalopram and sertraline in post-stroke depression: a randomized controlled trial.BMC psychiatry · 2024Trial
- Executive Functioning in Pediatric Anxiety and Its Relationship to Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Treatment Response: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial.Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Role of the Amygdala in the Complex Relationship Between Sleep and Anxiety.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Perceived Maternal Overprotection and Amygdala Functional Connectivity in Children: Implications for Childhood Depressive Symptoms.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Neuroimaging as a Tool for Advancing Pediatric Psychopharmacology.Paediatric drugs · 2025Review
- Neural Markers of Treatment Response in Pediatric Anxiety and PTSD.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Shared and Disorder-Specific Alterations of Brain Temporal Dynamics in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Schizophrenia.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Article
- Potential biomarker of brain response to opioid antagonism in adolescents with eating disorders: a pilot study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders in adolescents. However, only 50% of pediatric patients with anxiety disorders respond to the first-line pharmacologic treatments-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Thus, identifying the neurofunctional targets of SSRIs and finding pretreatment or early-treatment neurofunctional markers of SSRI treatment response in this population is clinically important. We acquired pretreatment and early-treatment (2 weeks into treatment) functional magnetic resonance imaging during a continuous processing task with emotional and neutral distractors in adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD, N = 36) randomized to 8 weeks of double-blind escitalopram or placebo. Generalized psychophysiological interaction analysis was conducted to examine the functional connectivity of the amygdala while patients viewed emotional pictures. Full-factorial analysis was used to investigate the treatment effect of escitalopram on amygdala connectivity. Correlation analyses were performed to explore whether pretreatment and early (week 2) treatment-related connectivity were associated with treatment response (improvement in anxiety) at week 8. Compared to placebo, escitalopram enhanced emotional processing speed and enhanced negative right amygdala-bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and positive left amygdala-right angular gyrus connectivity during emotion processing. Baseline amygdala-vmPFC connectivity and escitalopram-induced increased amygdala-angular gyrus connectivity at week 2 predicted the magnitude of subsequent improvement in anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that amygdala connectivity to hubs of the default mode network represents a target of acute SSRI treatment. Furthermore, pretreatment and early-treatment amygdala connectivity could serve as biomarkers of SSRI treatment response in adolescents with GAD. The trial registration for the study is ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02818751.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.