Early improvement predicts 8-week treatment outcome in patients with generalized anxiety disorder treated with escitalopram or venlafaxine.

Introduction To investigate whether early improvement can predict 8-week treatment outcome in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients. Methods For 8 weeks, 226 GAD patients were randomly treated with escitalopram or venlafaxine. Early improvement was defined as a >= 20% reduction from baseline in Hamilton anxiety rating scale at week 1 or 2. The positive and negative predictive values were calculated. Results The positive and negative predictive values of early improvement in escitalopram or venlafaxine group at week 1 were (85.19%, 67.53%) vs (84.62%, 65.33%) Discussion The early improvement achieved within the first week treatment can predict a good 8-week treatment outcome in GAD patients.