FOLK REMEDY MAY HELP DEPRESSION.

Byline: Suzanne Zolfo Medical Tribune News Service

Extracts of the herb St. John's wort may effectively treat depression, a new report concludes.

In an analysis of 23 studies involving more than 1,750 people with mild to moderately severe depression, preparations made from an active ingredient in St. John's wort - hypericum - were found to be almost three times as effective as placebo when taken for about one to two months.

The preparations, pills or liquids, also appeared to be as effective as antidepressant drug therapy, reported lead researcher Klaus Linde of Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat in Munich, Germany.

St. John's wort has been used in folk medicine for more than 2,000 years for its purported antidepressant and wound-healing effects. Exactly how it counters depression is not known, Linde noted in the study, published this week in the British Medical Journal.

But while hypericum preparations were found to be as effective as antidepressants in the new study, stronger evidence is still needed before hypericum should be substituted for drug therapy in the treatment of depression, according to Peter DeSmet, a clinical pharmacologist with the Dutch Association for the Advancement of Pharmacy in the Hague, Netherlands.

Currently, hypericum is widely used by German doctors, who prescribed almost 66 million daily doses of hypericum-containing preparations in 1994, he noted in an accompanying editorial.

Hypericum is not available in prescription medications in the United States, but the whole herb is used by American practitioners of natural healing and herbal medicine.