Tired of Prozac? Zoloft and Paxil not working? If you're not keen on traditional antidepressant medicines, new research shows that an over-the-counter therapy could work for you. Doctors and nurses from the National Institutes of Health tested the hormone supplement DHEA, a dietary supplement that may prevent degenerative disorders, to see if it could help depression.

What the researchers wanted to know: Does the hormone DHEA help patients with depression?

What they did: The researchers treated 23 men and 23 women between the ages of 40 and 65 who had depression that had come on within the previous five years and who were not currently taking other antidepressants. Half the sample received DHEA (Its full name is dehydroepiandrosterone.), and half received a placebo pill for six weeks. Then, after taking no pills for two weeks, the groups switched therapies. The researchers used several common questionnaires to measure depression symptoms, including sexual interest before, during, and after the therapy.

What they found: For about half the sample (12 women and 11 men), DHEA improved their depression significantly during the six weeks of treatment. However, the researchers could not find anything to predict what would make some people respond to the treatment and not others—age, prior depression, gender, depression severity, and hormone levels all did not correlate with the response to DHEA. When participants took the placebo, about one third improved; that's pretty average for depression studies, according to the lead researcher.

What it means to you: Because only half the participants responded to DHEA, the researchers suggest that DHEA should be used only if other therapies do not work or if a person does not want to take traditional medicines. DHEA can be effective and is relatively free of side effects—oily skin was the worst in this study—but since there is no way to predict whether or not it will treat depression in one person versus another, this hormone won't be the magic pill. In addition, DHEA is sold over the counter as a dietary supplement, a relatively unregulated corner of the world. Some products that say they contain DHEA may not actually include it—in one study less than half of the products that were marketed as having DHEA contained the dose they claimed.

Caveats: The researchers restricted their study to exclude people with severe depression. Though the treatment had the same effect on those with mild and major depression, the researchers say that DHEA may not be effective for people whose depression is severe enough to warrant inpatient treatment, including people who are suicidal. In addition, there are much fewer studies on the effects of DHEA on depression than on traditional therapies—so this drug should be considered only after other options have been explored.

Find out more: The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance has resources for people with mood disorders, including depression, and information about the disease and its treatments.

DHEA is a controversial hormone. For one side, take a look at DrugDigest, which explains some of the potential benefits of the hormone.

Quackwatch.org has the opposing perspective.

Read the article: Schmidt, P.J. et al. "Dehydroepiandrosterone Monotherapy in Midlife-Onset Major and Minor Depression." Archives of General Psychiatry. February 2005, Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 154–162.

Abstract online: http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org