Washington, D.C., April 8, 2002 – The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) and expert scientists today questioned the value of a study of St. John’s wort on moderate to severe depression to be published in the April 10 issue of JAMA, calling it “misdirected and inconsequential.”

St. John’s wort, the most commonly used antidepressant in Germany and one of the top five selling botanicals in the United States, is recommended and proven beneficial only for mild to moderate depression, based on more than 30 published clinical studies and several meta-analyses and systematic reviews. This new, multi-million dollar, NIH-sponsored study was targeted at moderate to severe depression, a use not recommended or supported for St. John’s wort. This NIH-sponsored clinical trial compared St. John’s wort (an herbal extract), sertraline (a prescription antidepressant, used as a positive control), and placebo (dummy treatment, used as negative control) for the treatment of moderate to severe depression. The detailed results of this new study indicate that the patient group was, in general, non-responsive to any treatment offered. According to the studies’ authors (Davidson et al.), “On the two primary outcome measures, neither sertraline nor H. perforatum [St. John’s wort] was significantly different from placebo.”

However, the authors and the JAMA press release surprisingly downplay the fact that St. John’s wort did no worse than a known, effective antidepressant in the two most important primary outcome measures of the study and, instead, emphasize only the botanical’s lack of efficacy for an unintended use. According to John Cardellina, Ph.D., vice president, botanical science and regulatory affairs, CRN, “This new report dismisses the scientific fact that St. John’s wort has been proven safe and beneficial for the treatment of mild to moderate depression, stress and anxiety, according to a substantial body of evidence in the medical literature based on more than 30 controlled clinical studies and three meta-analyses or systematic reviews.”

Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University and author of “The Emotional Revolution,” said, “The findings of this study are of limited value, because St. John’s wort is not generally used for moderate to severely depressed people. Instead, extensive research has demonstrated the herb’s efficacy for mild to moderate depression. It would be a shame if we discarded St. John’s wort as a treatment for mildly to moderately depressed persons on the basis of these findings.”

“It is difficult to understand why NIH chose to study this type of patient population,” said Jerry Cott, Ph.D., psychopharmacologist and former chief of the Psychopharmacology Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), NIH. “It appears that they enrolled a population of patients who were too depressed to respond to either sertraline or hypericum. If they had designed the study to focus on mild to moderate depression, then we likely would have seen a very different result with both standard antidepressant and St. John’s wort. The lack of response in the standard treatment (positive control) group prevents any valid conclusions from this study regarding the effectiveness of St. John’s wort.”

According to NIMH, in any given one-year period, about 18.8 million American adults suffer from depression. St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) has been used for centuries to treat mental disorders as well as nerve pain. More than 30 clinical studies support the effectiveness of St. John’s wort in managing the symptoms of mild to moderate depression.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) is one of the dietary supplement industry’s leading trade associations representing ingredient suppliers and manufacturers.