This is probably the first time you're learning about SAM (s-adenosylmethionine, aka SAMe), even though in Italy this natural biochemical has been commonly prescribed for depression for years.

SAM's antidepressant effect was first reported in Italy in 1973, and it's largely from there that nearly 40 clinical trials (25 of them controlled) involving over a thousand patients have usually affirmed SAM's marked superiority to placebo and its equivalence, if not superiority, to drugs (Bressa, 1994).

Some of America's research elite have put SAM through its paces too (for example, Kagan et al, 1990; Rosenbaum et al., 1990). And in a psychiatry textbook, the chief of biological psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health has admiringly cited "the rapid onset of effects of SAM in a high percentage of patients and the relative absence of side effects in a large number of controlled studies" (Post, 1995).

Actually SAM may not be that good unless you inject it every day. The minority of studies using oral SAM suggest it may "only" be as fast and effective as oral drugs for mildly to severely depressed patients. In pill form, SAM has, in fact, performed rather unimpressively in some studies, yielding in one a paltry 22% average improvement in self-rated depression (De Vanna and Rigamonti, 1992), failing in another to significantly better placebo (though the Harvard investigators suspected a bioavailability problem with the new formulation they used) (Fava et al., 1992). But every effective antidepressant has its bad days, and overall SAM looks to be the real McCoy. On a good day, in a randomized, double-blind trial from UCLA, six out of nine hospitalized depressives responded to oral SAM after just 3 weeks, compared with one out of six on placebo (Kagan et al, 1990). Though usually very brief, the average controlled trial has found oral SAM to be markedly effective for about half of the depressives studied (Bressa, 1994).

View or order Natural Antidepressants at Amazon.com

Browse books on SAM at Amazon.com

Browse books on the alternative treatment of depression at Amazon.com

Books Popular Music Classical Music Videos Search by keywords:

Toys Consumer Electronics Search by keywords:

---

R E F E R E N C E S

• Bressa, G. M., "S-Adenosyl-L-Methionine (SAMe) as Antidepressant: Meta-Analysis of Clinical Studies," Acta Neurologica Scandinavica-Supplement, 154 (1994):7-14.
• De Vanna, M. and R. Rigamonti, "Oral S-Adenosyl-L-Methionine in Depression," Current Therapeutic Research 52 (September 1992): 478-485.
• Fava, M., et al., "The Thyrotropin Response to Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone as a Predictor of Response to Treatment in Depressed Outpatients," Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 86 (1992): 42-45.
• Kagan, B. L., et al., "Oral S-adenosylmethionine in Depression: a Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Trial," American Journal of Psychiatry, 147 (May 1990):591-5.
• Post, Robert M.,, "Mood Disorders: Somatic Treatment," In Harold I. Kaplan and Benjamin J. Sadock (Eds.), Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/VI (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1995), pp. 1152-1178.
• Rosenbaum, J. F. et al., "The Antidepressant Potential of Oral S-Adenosyl-L-Methionine," Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 81 (May 1990):432-436.