Online tool helps people pick the right antidepressant for them

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-03-05 03:00

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People who use a new online tool that helps pick the right antidepressant for them are more likely to stick with their treatment over an eight week period and show symptom improvement, according to UK research. The online tool, known as Petrushka, uses AI and data from more than one million people to help people make decisions about the best antidepressants for them during a consultation. The study found that those who used the tool were less likely to stop treatment over an eight week period and were more likely to have improved depressive and anxiety symptoms at 24 weeks. An accompanying editorial says accounting for patient preference appears to offer important clinical benefit with little risk, cost, or treatment delay.

News release

From: JAMA

A Decision-Support System to Personalize Antidepressant Treatment in Major Depressive Disorder

About The Study: Compared with usual care, use of the PETRUSHKA tool increased the number of patients still taking their antidepressant at 8 weeks and improved depressive and anxiety symptoms at 24 weeks. However, lack of a double-blind design and the large amount of missing data limit the validity of these results. The PETRUSHKA tool is a web-based clinical decision-support system combining clinical and demographic predictors with patient preferences to personalize antidepressant treatment.

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Research JAMA, Web page Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends).

Journal/
conference: JAMA

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Oxford, UK

Funder: This study was sponsored by the University of Oxford and was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research as part of research professorship grant RP-2017-08-ST2-006 (awarded to Dr A. Cipriani). This trial and the antidepressants included in the PETRUSHKA tool are based on research using anonymized clinical trial data from Angelini Pharma, Eli Lilly, GSK, Lundbeck, and Servier that was made available directly to Dr A. Cipriani or through Vivli Inc.

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