Are antidepressants useful for functional abdominal pain?

Authors’ conclusions: patients had more response to serotonin reuptake inhibitors than to tricyclic antidepressants, independently of the associated psychiatric component. They give little importance to the gastrointestinal symptoms caused by the drug that could be the cause of the withdrawal of the medication.

Reviewers’ commentary: antidepressants appear to be effective for the treatment of functional abdominal pain, with a therapeutic advantage of serotonin reuptake inhibitors over tricyclics. However, given the methodological limitations of the study, the lack of concordance with other available data and the high percentage of adverse effects, it seems prudent to wait for larger and higher quality studies to be able to recommend its use in this functional pathology.