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  3. Antidepressants fail to cure the symptoms of major depression in half of all patients with the disease even if they receive the

Antidepressants fail to cure the symptoms of major depression in half of all patients with the disease even if they receive the

admin2010-03-26  57
问题     Antidepressants fail to cure the symptoms of major depression in half of all patients with the disease even if they receive the best possible care, according to a definitive government study released yesterday.
    Significant numbers of patients continue to experience symptoms such as sadness, low energy and hopelessness after intensive treatment, even as about an equal number report an end to such problems--a result that quickly lent itself to interpretations that the glass was either half empty or half full.
    The $35 million taxpayer-funded study was the largest trial of its kind ever conducted. It provided what industry-sponsored trials have rarely captured: rather than merely ask whether patients are getting better, the study asked what patients most care about--whether depression can be made to disappear altogether.
    The study has been eagerly awaited by physicians, patients and the pharmaceutical industry. According to government statistics, depression afflicts 15 million Americans a year. About 189 million prescriptions for antidepressants were written last year, and the disease costs the nation $83 billion annually because of treatment costs, lost productivity, absenteeism and suicide.
    David Rubinow, a professor and the chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the results are an "illuminating and disconcerting" window into the affliction that is thought to fuel many of the 30,000 suicides committed each year in the United States.
    Although the study showed that patients who do not respond well to one drug could be helped by another, the results are "discouraging for several reasons," Rubinow said in an editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which also published the study. It is troubling that large numbers of patients continued to have problems, he said. Additionally, he noted that the drugs used in the study--Celexa, Wellbutrin, Zoloft and Effexor--work in very different ways yet had roughly equal effectiveness when it came to treating depression. This suggests that the underlying brain mechanisms of depression are far more complicated than simple notions of a single chemical imbalance.
    Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study, emphasized that patients should seek---and stick with--treatment. "The glass is half full from our perspective, "he said. But "the glass is half empty in that we need to come up with better treatments in the future."
What the patients care about most is ______.
选项 A、whether they are getting better
B、whether depression can be cured of at all
C、whether their treatment coast is worthwhile
D、whether they can be accepted by society
答案B
解析 根据第三段“Rather than merely ask whether patients are getting better，the study asked what patients most care about--whether depression can be made to disappear altogether．”该句意为：“研究中并非只向病人调查他们的状况是否有所好转，而是就病人最关心的问题，即抑郁症经过治疗是否会彻底消失这一问题进行了调查。”选项B中 be cured of表示“被治疗”，与该句be made to disappear同义。
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