Trial reportJournal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)2024
Effects of discontinuation of serotonergic antidepressants prior to psilocybin therapy versus escitalopram for major depression.
Trial report in Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 2 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Multilevel Mechanisms and Clinical Efficacy of Psilocybin in Depression Treatment: A Systematic Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Pooled it
- The application of esketamine in cancer-related depressive states: attention from mechanisms to clinical translation.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- A randomized clinical trial of repeated doses of psilocybin for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2026Trial
- Acute Effects and Pharmacokinetics of LSD after Paroxetine or Placebo Pre-Administration in a Randomized, Double-Blind, Cross-Over Phase I Trial.Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2025Trial
- Natural medicine‑empowered treatment of depression via restoring neurogenesis (Review).Molecular medicine reports · 2026Review
- Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy in Psychiatry: A Narrative Clinical Review of Mechanisms, Therapeutic Applications, and Emerging Evidence (2025-2026).Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Psilocybin-Assisted Early Palliative Care for Demoralization and Chronic Pain: An Open-Label Pilot Study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Article
- Considerations and cautions for the integration of psilocybin into routine clinical care: a consensus statement from the US National Network of Depression Centers' Task Group on Psychedelics and Related Compounds.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Review
- Concomitant use of antidepressants and classic psychedelics: A scoping review.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- The psychedelic-peptide paradox: a hormetic hypothesis.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Review
- The Emergence of Psilocybin in Psychiatry and Neuroscience.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Roadmap for Equitable Access and Responsible Use of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy in Palliative Care.Palliative medicine reports · 2025Article
- Trends in research on novel antidepressant treatments.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Review
- Psilocybin with psychotherapeutic support for treatment-resistant depression: a pilot clinical trial.Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Review of Psilocybin Use for Depression among Cancer Patients after Approval in Oregon.Cancers · 2024Review
- Interactions between classic psychedelics and serotonergic antidepressants: Effects on the acute psychedelic subjective experience, well-being and depressive symptoms from a prospective survey study.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Neuroimaging and the Investigation of Drug-Drug Interactions Involving Psychedelics.Neuroscience insights · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThere is growing evidence for the therapeutic effects of the psychedelic drug psilocybin for major depression. However, due to the lack of safety data on combining psilocybin with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) and concerns that there may be a negative interaction on efficacy, participants enrolling in psychedelic trials are usually required to discontinue SNRI/SNRIs prior to enrolling.
aimsUsing data from a recent clinical trial examining the comparative efficacy the psychedelic drug psilocybin (P) combined with approximately 20 h of psychological support to a 6-week (daily) course of the SSRI escitalopram plus matched psychological support for major depressive disorder, we explored the effects of discontinuing SSRI/SNRIs prior to study enrolment on study outcomes.
methodsExploratory post hoc analyses using linear mixed effects model were performed to investigate the discontinuation effect on various validated depression symptom severity scales and well-being. The impact of SSRI/SNRIs discontinuation on the acute psychedelic experience was also explored. RESULTS/OUTCOMES: In the psilocybin group, there was a reduced treatment effect on all outcome measures for SSRI/SNRIs discontinuers compared with unmedicated patients at trial entry. However, no effects of discontinuation on measures of the acute psychedelic experience were found.
conclusionDiscontinuation of SSRI/SNRIs before psilocybin might diminish response to treatment; however, as we did not test SSRI/SNRI continuation in our trial, we cannot infer such causation. Moreover, the exploratory nature of the analyses makes them hypothesis generating, and not confirmatory. A controlled trial of SSRI/SNRI discontinuation versus continuation prior to psilocybin is urgently required.
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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.