https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4689021/

Impact on behavioral changes due to chronic use of sertraline in Wistar albino rats

Hey guys, do you think that this article on Sertraline losing its efficacy after week 6 is possibly fabricated? The study took 30 wistar albino rodents and gave them 3 varying doses of sertraline throughout a course of 9 weeks to determine if they assist in rescuing symptoms of anxiety and behavioral despair.

During the first three weeks of the experiment, rodenrs underwent a chronic stress model. My question to all of you is, do you think these researchers fabricated the results to prove their hypothesis that long term SSRI use leads to behavioral despair?

When looking closely at the graphs, we see no SEM bars, almost all of the data (with the exception of sucrose preference) begins declining at week 6 specifically for all the experimental groups. This seems very suspicious to me. Data with sample sizes this small is usually a lot more messy and not translated so cleanly across all the different measures tested.

is it not strange that the benefit of the drug almost always begins to diminish at week 6 and completely loses its benefit by week 9? This doesn’t seem right, I would expect the data to be much more scattered and not a perfect V or upside down V shape..

when comparing this data to other studies that have looked at SSRIs long term such as Lu Et Al’s Fluoxetine study for 120 days, this shows a complete loss of efficacy that isn’t seen in other long term Ssri studies.

I stumbled across this article when I did some research on whether or not SSRIs develop tolerance long term. When I saw it, I became extremely discouraged and somewhat hopeless that the medication I’m using will lose its efficacy entirely and I will be at that dark place I was before I started it.

I understand that rodent and human timelines vary so the 6 week mark for rodenrs could represent a much longer period in humans. That’s why I worry that maybe long term my sertraline will eventually stop working.

Thatsbwhy I came on here, to see if you guys believe that this could potentially be fabricated. I thought about posting it to PubPeer but wanted to see if I could get some opinions here first

if the authors did fabricate this, it is extremely cruel on their part. any advice is appreciated, thank you.