Herb Might Help Ease Depression, New Study Indicates

St. John’s wort, a plant used in European folk medicines to relieve depression, might actually ease some of the symptoms in some people, researchers reported Friday.

A review of 23 different studies, most published in non-English medical journals, suggested that St. John’s wort, known scientifically as Hypericum perforatum, worked 2.7 times better than a placebo and roughly as well as many antidepressant drugs in mildly depressed people. Relief of symptoms generally took days or weeks to occur.

The survey of studies, led by Dr. Klaus Linde of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, involved 1,757 patients with mild to moderate depression who were cared for by family physicians.

Herbal remedy handbooks have long touted the treatment, but the new study is among the most rigorous analyses of a so-called alternative medical therapy to find a positive effect and to be published in a major, peer-reviewed medical journal. It appears in today’s British Medical Journal.

“I think [St. John’s wort] has the potential to be effective for lots of people and the potential to have minimal side effects,” said Dr. Cynthia Mulrow, an internist at the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital in San Antonio and a co-author of the study.

But she warned that people should not treat themselves with extracts or infusions of St. John’s wort. The studies that were analyzed did not clearly define what kind of depression the patients had to begin with. And she said nothing was known about possible long-term adverse effects of heavy intake of the herb preparation.

An editorial in the British Medical Journal suggested that while the research was promising, it failed to show the herb was effective against serious depression, that virtually nothing was known about its active ingredients, and that the treatment was given for no longer than two months, providing no data on long-term side effects.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that St. John’s wort extracts are unsafe because in large doses they can make the skin and eyes extra sensitive to light. The herb is most commonly packaged here as a tea.